





































































































Gopyiight iN° 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






















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ONCE UPON A TIME 















THE 


HOW AND WHY LIBRARY 

• a 

LITTLE QUESTIONS THAT LEAD 
TO GREAT DISCOVERIES 

BY 

MRS. ELEANOR ATKINSON 

Author of Greyfriar’s Bobby, The Boyhood of Lincoln, Etc. 

SCHOOL STUDIES MADE AS FASCINATING 
. AS FICTION FOR CHILDREN AND 
READERS OF ALL AGES 


Includes an Explanation of the Beginning and Brotherhood of Life as Every 
Mother Wishes her Child to Know It; A Trip Around the World; Picture 
Visits to the Great Industries and Intimate Insights into the Ways 
of Men, Birds, Flowers, Insects, Wind and Weather 


FILLED WITH BEAUTIFUL AND INSTRUCTIVE 
ILLUSTRATIONS—MANY IN COLORS 



The objects of the Congress shall be to bring into closer relations the home and the school; ... to surround 
the children of the world with that wise, loving care in the impressionable years of life that will develop good 
citizens.— From the Constitution of the National Congress of Mothers. 

To bring parent and school into closer relations is so important that we cannot overestimate it.— Charles 
McMurry, Professor of Education, Northern Illinois Norrial University and Contributing Editor to The New 
Student's Reference Work. 


CHICAGO 

F. E. COMPTON & COMPANY 

I 9 I 3 



Copyright, 1909, by C. B. Beach 
Copyright, 1911, by C. B. Beach 
Copyright, 1912, by C. B. Beach 

Copyright, 1912, by F. E. Compton and Company 
Copyright, 1913, by F. E. Compton and Company 


It 




©Cl. A3 5 1.808 
A-C / 





THE “WHY” OF THE HOW AND WHY LIBRARY 

T IS well known how eager all normal children are 
to go to school. 

By “school'' we mean not so much the Common 
School, as the Commoner School we call “Life.” 

A child instinctively asks questions. Curiosity 
is the appetite of the mind. His questions show that 
his mind is all ready for the answers. If they are 
given wholesome encouragement and direction, he 
will grow to find the greatest pleasure as well as 
profit in learning about the great and good things of 
the world he has inherited rather than the silly and the bad. 

The answers can be made and are here made to lead straight 
into invention, art, science, engineering, good morals and good 
citizenship, preparation for a successful life—the development 
of a clean, strong body and a clean, strong mind. 

To bring home and school into such practical co-operation 
in the development of the child—that is the greatest idea in the 
modern educational system; that is the purpose of the “How 
and Why Library." Its articles have a field all their own. They 
do not take the place of the delightful story books for children— 
of which there are many that are good in spite of the fact that 
there are so many that are either worthless or bad. Neither 
do they take the place of the text book. They prepare for the 
text book before the child starts to school; they supplement it 
after he begins. 

Did you ever stop to think what a big thing a little key is? 
The “Hows” and “Whys” between these book covers are the 
keys to this wonderful world of ours. Without such keys the 
child cannot enter—cannot understand. This is the tragedy of 
the old school methods. 

Modern education is entering a field of glorious possibilities 
for our children, but we must do our share. The school can help 
the home, but the home must help itself. The mother-teacher, 
the father-teacher, the big-sister and big-brother teachers must 
come back again. 

After all, they’re our children—our little brothers and sis¬ 
ters—aren’t they? 

Open the door and walk in—children and all. Because it 
is such a remarkable work for children, it is none the less a work 
of infinite charm for readers of all ages. 

The Publishers. 



















FOREWORD 


REFERENCES: In the articles throughout this volume will 
be found frequent references to related titles for further read¬ 
ing or study. For example, the article on the “Good Luck 
Family” has this notation: “See Legume, Clover, Shamrock.” 
The articles thus referred to will either be found in the present 
volume, as indicated in the Table of Contents, or in “The New 
Student’s Reference Work,” a descriptive announcement of which 
appears in the back of this book. These references have been 
made owing to the wide distribution of the “ Student’s,” the ease 
with which reliable information can be secured in its pages and 
the fact that it has a place in the libraries of most of those 
who own “The How and Why Library.” 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Grateful acknowledgments are 

made for the right to use valuable illustrations and for suggestions 
in the preparation of “The How and Why Library” to publish¬ 
ers, educators, public officials and others. Among these we wish 
to specially mention The Scientific American of New York, the 
Technical World Magazine of Chicago, the Woman’s Magazine 
of New York, the Cleveland Leader, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 
Charles K. Reed, publisher of the Bird Guide; J. J. West, 
Chief Scout Executive, and E. H. Merritt, Secretary of the 
Editorial Board, Boy Scouts of America; L. O. Howard, Chief 
of the United States Department of Entomology, Washington, 
D. C.; A. F. Sherman, Acting Commissioner of Immigration at 
Ellis Island; the Chicago Art Institute; Professor John M. 
Coulter, head of the Department of Botany, University of Chi¬ 
cago; and C. H. Speers, General Passenger Agent of the Colorado 
Midland Railway. 


CONTENTS 

STORIES OF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY 

The articles in this department deal, in their historic order, with the various 
peoples who constitute our “America,”—where they came from, and our indebt¬ 
edness to each for their contributions to our national life. 

PAGE 

The Red Child of the Forest —The Indian .13 

The Little Pale Faces Who Came Over the Sea —The Puritans .16 

Little Wooden Two Shoes —The Dutch .20 

Ship Loads of Politeness —The French .22 

Little Friends in Furs— In the Home of the Esquimos .24 

Children from Spain —With Juan and Dolores in Cuba .26 

The Little Black Children Who Lived in a “Zoo ”—Life in Africa .29 

Babes in the Woods —With Daniel Boone in Kentucky .32 

Pioneer Days and Ways —From Log Cabin to Whitehouse .34 

What “Liebe Mutter” Brought to America— St. Nicholas and the Christ¬ 
mas Tree—The German’s Success in Business .37 

The Miraculous Pitcher —Brave Humor, Family Devotion and Resource¬ 
fulness of the Irish .39 

The Golden Fleece of America —To California With the Gold Seekers .41 

Alice in Wonderland —To California in a Palace Car with Grandpapa .43 

The Children of Topsy Turvy Land —The Little Folks of Japan .47 

All Work and No Play for Little Wung Foo —The Chinese Boy .51 

All Play and No Work for Manuelo —Children of the Philippines .54 

Children of “The Arabian Nights ”—Home Life in the Desert .58 

The Little Country of the Big Mountain —Switzerland and the Alps .61 

The “Front Door” of America —Ellis Island .65 

WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE ON 

I. Land —How soil is made from rocks and how the earth got its high 
mountains, sandy deserts, lakes, oceans, green valleys, and winding 

streams .70 

II. Water —How the sun pumps the ocean up into the sky and, with the 

wind’s help, brings rain, snow, hail and fog .76 

III. Air —Life at the bottom of our blue ocean—The air rivers and ! sw they 
flow. How to tell when air is bad .81 

THE STORY OF LIFE 

The articles in this department are intended to teach the child the sacred¬ 
ness and the wonder of all life and its beginnings in seed and germ, and to 
prepare for a study of the related sciences in the higher grades by introducing 
him, in a simple and entertaining way, to the living world of plants and animals, 
starting with the simplest and passing, step by step, to the highest forms. 

Part I—Plants 

We Meet the Fairy Godmother —Story of Cell Life . 87 

How the Yeast Plant Grows in a Loaf of Bread. 90 

Sailor Plants and Robinson Cruesoes —Story of Sea Plants, Lichens, etc.. 93 
Water Babies that Live on Land —Liverworts and Their Whips and Balls 96 

Pigmy Plants and Their Wonderful Labors —Mosses . 99 

How the Ferns Grew Bones and Babies —Learning to Stand Alone .101 

How Fairy Fungi Turned Into a Dandelion.104 

Why Plants are Like Squirrels —How They Store Food ...108 

Plants Have Visitors and Travel Abroad —How Wind, Insects and Birds 

Carry Seeds . 1 

How Plants are Promoted —Work of Bees and Mr. Burbank .115 

Part II—Animals 

The Little Animal that Walks with Its Stomach and Eats with Its 

Feet —The Amoeba .. 

Water Babies that Live in a Village —Sponges .122 


































PAGE 


A Sea Flower that Eats and Moves— The Sea-Anemone .125 

The Web of Life: Mother Nature at Her Loom.128 

The Star Fish and Sea Urchins that Play with Live Dolls.131 

A Long Speech by a Little Worm— Lessons the Earthworm Teaches .134 

The Earthworm Puts on Armor— Curious Anatomy of the Crawfish .137 

How the Worm in Armor Counts by Twos and Threes.141 

Mr. Crawfish and His Table Manners....144 

The Crawfish, the Spider and the Fly— An Interesting Comparison .147 

Why the Crawfish Crawled Into a Shell— The Oyster .151 

The Oyster Learns to Swim— The Fish .153 

The Oyster-Fish that Climbed on Shore— The Frog .156 

Birds of the Water and Birds of the Air — Curious Resemblances . 159 


Water Babies and Other Babies that Drink Milk — The Vertebrates... .162 


NATURE STUDY 

“Nature Study”, in the modern school, emphasizes, first of all, the things 
which the child can investigate most readily—birds, insects, flowers and trees. 
The following articles take him through the entire year and deal with the most 
important features of familiar plants, trees and insects and all the common varie¬ 
ties of birds. The child’s interest in nature is spontaneous, and through no 
other medium can his observation and reasoning powers be so easily developed. 


Part I. Flowers 

I. A Wild Garden and Its Tenants.167 

II. Little Lion-tooth (Dandelion) and Its Cousins.171 

III. A Good Luck Family— Clover .175 

IV. The Bonny Briar Bush— The Wild Rose Family .179 

Part II. Trees (A Year in the Forest) 

I. Spring; “Rockaby Babies”.184 

II. Summer; “In the Tree Tops”.189 

III. Autumn; “When the Wind Blows”.193 

IV. Winter; “The Cradles Will Rock”. 197 

Part III. Insects 

I. Mrs. Musca Domestica Calls— The Fly Tells Its Story .201 

II. Mrs. Garden Spider “At Home”.205 

III. Gulliver Man and His Lilliputian Enemies— Destructive Insects . . .209 

IV. Pigmy Friends That Fly and Hop and Creep.213 

Part IV. Birds 

I. Bird Songs and Colors.*18 

II. Bird Nests and Babies .22o 

III. Little Friends in Feathers.231 


WILD ANIMALS YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW 
Related to those subjects on which he specializes in Nature Study are the 
animals of the “Zoo”, the traveling menagerie and the “Wild Animals Near 
Home.” This interest, properly encouraged and developed, is a source of never- 
failing delight and mental growth. 

I. Big Brother Bear. 237 

II. Pet Pussy and King Lion.243 

III. Here Come the Elephants.248 

IV. The Animal Acrobat and Clown— The Monkey .254 

V. The Ship of the Desert— The Camel .260 

VI. Kangaroo and ’Possum, too.265 

VII- The Graceful Camelopard— The Giraffe .269 

VIII. Mr. Nose Horn and Mr. River Horse — Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus 273 

IX. Wild Animals Near Home— Squirrels, Rabbits and Other Shy Neigh¬ 
bors .. .278 


PICTURE VISITS TO THE GREAT INDUSTRIES 
Every child has an instinctive interest in the great industries and how the 
wheels “go round." Familiarity with these processes is one of the most prac¬ 
tical phases of Geography teaching in our schools, and the co-operation of the 
home, if supplied with appropriate material, is easy and desirable. Nine typical 
industries of special interest to children are graphically presented in this de¬ 
partment. 

I. Big Business from Little Seeds— Wheat and Flour Milling 


284 





































PAGE 

II. The Wonderful Gift of Good King Cotton— Culture and Manufac¬ 
ture .289 

III. The Little Iron Pig that Goes to Market— Ore Fields to Steel Mill. 294 

IV. Art in Making Mud Pies— The Pottery Industry .299 

V. When a Tree is Lumber— Lumbering and Woodworking Industries. .304 

VI. Just to Light a Fire— How Matches are Made .309. 

VII. A Look Through a Window— Glassmaking .313 

VIII. The Bread of Nogi, Wung Foo and Manuelo— Rice Growing .318 

IX. Brownie Tick Tock and the Stars — Watch and Clock Manufacture .323 

GOOD HEALTH AND OUR SOLDIERS OF PEACE 
The articles in the two departments following are intended to interest and 
instruct the child with regard to his own good health, and the family health 
(domestic sanitation), and to create a spirit of appreciative helpfulness toward 
those departments of city life which protect us from disease, fire and crime. 


GOOD HEALTH 

I. Your Own Health.330 

II. The Family Health.335 

SOLDIERS OF PEACE 

I. Fighters for Everybody's Health.339 

II. Fire Fighters.344 

III. Fighters for Law and Order.349 

THE HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 
The questions asked every day by children are now recognized as offering 
a unique opportunity for parent and teacher. They are the child’s own sponta¬ 
neous expression of his desire to know. He is hungry. Feed him. In this 
department are answered in a very entertaining style nearly 100 typical questions. 
The properties of Heat, Light, Sound, Electricity and other natural forces 
are explained, and the foundation laid for the study of Physiology, Acoustics, 
Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics and other sciences in the higher grades. 

What are Tears For.353 

Doggie Knows with His Nose.354 

What is Smoke.354 

What is Color Blindness.355 

Why the Needle in the Compass Points North.357 

How the Moon Causes Tides in the Sea.357 

Sound Waves and the Telephone.359 

The Gas We Burn.360 

Birds and Balloons, Kites and Airships.361 

Why Rain Falls in Drops.362 

How to Find Your Way by the Stars.363 

How the Days Were Named.364 

How the Months Were Named.364 

What are Dog Days.365 

Why an Apple Falls to the Ground.366 

What is an Eclipse.367 

What Makes the Hum of a Bee.368 

Why Onions Make You Cry.369 

Why We Count by Tens.369 

Why Does Iron Rust.370 

Why Does the Heat Make Water Boil...371 

Why an Iron Ship Does Not Sink.371 

Why We Have Two Eyes.372 

Alva and His Electric Lamp.372 

What Keeps a Moving Car on the Track.374 

What Sours Milk.374 

Children, Birds and Teakettles.375 

Water and a Duck's Back.375 

Why Frozen Water Bursts Pipes.376 

Why We are Tanned by the Sun.376 

Why and How We Sleep.377 

The Ages of Animals.378 












































PAGE 

How Bears Live All Winter Without Eating.379 

What Makes the Sky Look Blue.379 

Why the Sky is Many Colored at Sunset.380 

Sound Waves and the Phonograph.380 

How Does Soap Make Things Clean.381 

What is the Horizon.381 

Why the Edges of Coins are Milled.382 

How Trains Run Around Curves.382 

Sources and Kinds of Oil.383 

What Keeps a Bicycle Upright..383 

Is There a Man in the Moon.383 

Why Birds Moult.384 

Why People Become Seasick.384 

How a Photograph is Taken.385 

Don't Put Boiling Water in a Cold Glass.386 

Why Salt Causes Thirst .38b 

How Steam Makes a Locomotive Go.386 

What Makes an Automobile Go.387 

Why Washington's Eyes Follow Us.388 

What Rings the Door Bell.388 

What Makes the Music in a Pipe Organ.389 

What Makes a Mirage.389 

Day and Night.390 

Where Today is Tomorrow —The International Date Line .391 

How the Spectrum Explains the Sun.392 

A World of Wonders in a Soap Bubble.394 

Why the Water of the Ocean is Salt.395 

What is “Horse Power”.396 

How Quickly Do Things Fall.396 

Are the Stars Inhabited.397 

Why Lightning Rods Protect Houses.398 

Why a Dog Turns Around Before Lying Down.398 

How Does Cloth, Paper or a Sponge Soak Up and Hold Water.399 

Why Some People are Left-handed.399 

Why a Popgun Pops. 400 

Why is a Cat Able to See in the Dark.400 

Live Silver—What Is It.401 

Thumb Print Autographs.402 

Fairy Prince Echo.402 

Why the Earth is Round.403 

Thunder and Lightning —What Causes Them .403 

HOW AND WHY OF ETIQUETTE 

Dr. Eliot says the subject matter of this section is one of the most important 
parts of education. “Manners” and knowledge of certain social forms are no 
less valuable in “getting on” in one’s life work. Lack of such information and 
training frequently explains why some succeed while others of equal or greater 
natural ability, fail. Self control, grace of bearing, ease of expression, the habit 
of drawing out the best in others—these things the world rightly regards as the 
real tests of education. Yet proper and sensible guidance is difficult to find. 

The Principles of Good Manners.404 

Good Manners in the Home.406 

Good Times at the Table.410 

On the Street .414 

For a Girl Traveling Alone.417 

Politeness in Business Life.420 

Listening and Talking .422 

Social Life for Children.426 

Good Form . 430 

Engagements and Weddings.435 

Calls, Introductions and Visits.440 

Dinner Parties and Luncheons.447 

Good Form in Correspondence.450 

Etiquette of the Invitation.454 

THE BOY SCOUTS . 460 


























































STORIES IN GEOGRAPHY 


CHILDREN OF OUR OWN AND OTHER LANDS 

Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher. —The study of descriptive 
and political Geography is introduced into the very first year of school, 
through travel stories. The first interest that little children show in other 
people and lands, is in the way other children live, particularly those of 
primitive peoples like the Indians and Esquimos, and people whose ways 
of living are radically different from their own. Geography teaching now 
takes advantage of this curiosity, on the part of the children, to introduce 
them to the general study. In this way they get a knowledge of the 
physical appearance, manners and customs, climate, products and trans¬ 
portation of other peoples and countries, in addition to some history and 
physiography. The supplementary reading with the geographical aspect, 
supplied to the lower grades, is very wide and comprehensive. To cover 
all that is supplied, requires the purchase of a great number of little supple¬ 
mentary readers, each at a cost of from thirty to fifty cents. 

This geographical department covers the most essential and attractive 
features of any one dozen supplementary readers, and has, besides, a unity 
of plan that none of the readers possess. The plan is to present primitive 
America, when it was inhabited only by the red child, then to bring the 
other children in, over the sea, in the chronological order of the coloniza¬ 
tion and settlement of the United States. The order followed here is the 
Indian, the English Puritan, the French, the Dutch and the Negro. The 
Esquimo peoples were visited very early by the New England whalers, 
and the Spanish colonists by trading vessels that went to Havana. 

When once the sea-board was peopled, came the period of the hunter 
in Kentucky. There the experience of Daniel Boone is taken as typical. 
This paved the way for the pioneer of the Lincoln period. During this 
time there were large migrations of German and Irish peoples. The dis¬ 
covery of gold carries the settlement of the United States to the Pacific 
coast. The subsequent development of California, as it is today, follows. 

Once having reached the Pacific coast, curiosity is led to take the 
world-round journey, to visit the children of the yellow and brown races, 
and the children of the Desert and the Alps. The world journey is logically 
completed by the return to the New York City of today, and a description 
of Castle Garden, where more than a million people of foreign lands are 
still entering America every year. This last feature is not to be found in 
any child’s reader on the market. 

The object, in these nineteen sketches, has been to present typical 
pictures of such facts as children are curious about, that will furnish a 

II 



12 


TO THE MOTHER AND THE TEACHER 


complete image that they are likely to retain, and upon which they can 
build further knowledge. There is also the object of creating sympathy, 
and consequent breadth of mind. The travelled person is always a man 
of wider culture and sympathy, than is the same man if he should stay 
at home and never come in contact with any other mode of living or 
thought than that in which he was born. This creating of sympathy with 
other people is of extreme importance in a country like ours, which is 
constantly being recruited by foreign peoples. We are far too apt to 
under-rate these newcomers, and to think that we are offering them all 
and receiving nothing in return. As a matter of fact there are no people 
who come to us but have some gift or contribution that they can make 
to the general welfare and pleasure. 







PAINTED BY E. IRVING COUSE, A. N. A. 


‘THE HI STO RIAN 




The Indian artist is painting in sign language, on buckskin, the story of a battle with American Soldiers, 
exhibited at the National Academy this picture was considered one of the most important paintings of the 
year. See if you can find the sign for the Indians, the United States Cavalry and the officer 
in command. The dots he is making now are “bullets.” See the arrows? 


When 





CHILDREN OF OUR OWN AND OTHER LANDS 


I. THE RED CHILD OF THE FOREST 

You are proud of being an American boy, aren’t you? Perhaps 
you will be surprised to learn that there is another boy who has a 
better right to the name than you have. He was here four hundred 
years ago, when Columbus sailed over the wide ocean and found 
our country. 

This American boy was tall and straight and slender. His eyes 
were as black as ink, his hair as black as a crow’s wing. He could 
mn like a deer, swim like a fish and climb like a squirrel. He was 
as solemn as a little owl. When he grew to a man he wore a head¬ 
dress of eagle feathers. You may find his picture on the copper 
penny in your pocket. The boy was very nearly the color of the 
penny, too. Now you know what he was. He was an American 
Indian. There are still a good many Indians in our country. They 
live in houses, on big farms. They dress like white boys, speak 
English and go to school. But their faces are the same as those 
Columbus saw. 

It was a hard, wild life the Indian boy lived. Still, he had a 
good deal of fun. It was like camping out all the time. There were 
four or five million Indians here, but the country was so big that 
there was room for everybody to move about a good deal. There 
were no cities or farms; no railway trains or wagons. The Indians had 
to travel on foot. They followed narrow paths, or trails, through the 
forests and over the plains. On the rivers and lakes they made long 
journeys, in boats so light that they could carry them on their shoulders 
from one stream to another. These boats they called canoes. They 
were made of birch bark stretched over frames of wood. A great 
many Indians travelled together, for company and for safety. Each 
band was called a tribe and each had a chief. When a tribe found 
a good place to camp, some poles were stuck in the ground in a circle. 
The top ends of these poles were tied together. Then the skins of 
wild animals, or mats woven of rushes were fastened over the poles. 

They called this tent a wigwam. Some Indians built dome-shaped 

13 


14 


THE RED CHILD OF THE FOREST 


wigwams, like circus tents. Others built long houses of bark, big 
enough to shelter the tribe. 

Our little Indian boy was born in a circus tent wigwam, in a 
village of other wigwams, in the forest. His mother put a long shirt 
of soft yellow deer skin on him, and taught him his first lesson before 
he was a day old. She taught him that he must not cry. When he 
cried she put her hand over his mouth. She did this because cruel 
enemies and wild animals might hear him. When he grew up he 
could bear any pain without complaining. 

The Indian baby could not even kick. His mother bound him 
to a flat piece of birch bark, to make his back and legs straight. She 
hung “ the baby and cradle and all ” from her shoulders. She wrapped 
a big skin around herself and the baby, if it was cold weather, leav¬ 
ing his face uncovered so he could see. Then they went “by-by.” 
Any baby would like that. When the tribe stopped to rest, the baby 
and his cradle were hung from the limb of a tree, and the wind rocked 
him to sleep. 

Someone was always saying “don’t” to the Indian boy and girl. 

“ Don’t make a noise when you walk. You must not even rustle a 
leaf, or snap a twig.” That might scare away the deer father was 
trying to kill, and then the family must go hungry. Sometimes, 
wdien out hunting, a boy had to lie for an hour, as quiet as pussy at 
a mouse hole. The Indian boy had to learn to strike fire from two 
pieces of flint; to make a bow and a stone arrow head; to make a 
canoe and snow shoes. He shot arrows at a mark every day; he 
speared fish, and threw stone hatchets. These hatchets w r ere called 
tomahawks. He must be able to tell what kind of w T eather w~as com¬ 
ing, and learn to read the picture writing on the sign posts set up 
in the forests. He must learn the ways and places and calls of animals 
and birds, and be able to follow the tracks of men and wild beasts. 
He had to learn how to fight, too, or he and his family would be 
killed. The Indian boy was grown to a man before he had learned 
all his lessons. 

One sign that he had grown up was that he was given a name. 
It was really a nickname, given for something he had, done. This 
name he had to bear all his life, so he was very careful not to do 
anything foolish or cowardly. If he did something brave, and got 
such a name as Eagle Heart, he was so proud he couldn’t sleep the 
first night. The Indian man was proud and brave and cunning. 
Sometimes he was cruel. No man could use him for a slave. 




THE RED CHILD OF THE FOREST 


PAST AND PRESENT 


'T' HE Indian medicine 
-*■ man thought he could 
cure disease by frightening 
away the evil spirits sup¬ 
posed to cause it, so he 
wore horns and other 
things to make him look 
savage. What is this 
medicine man wearing that 
used to belong to Brother 
Bear? Indians, when they 
live in wigwams, believe in 
medicine men, as Eagle 
Heart did, but most Indian 
children now go to school 
and know better. The two 


From the Statue by Dallin. 

THE MEDICINE MAN 


center pictures Show the 
boys and girls studying art 
and manual training at 
the Indian school at Car¬ 
lisle, Pa. In the summer 
the boys and girls at Car¬ 
lisle are allowed to work 
on neighboring farms 
where they can earn a 
little money and learn how 
farming is carried on. 
Our government has es¬ 
tablished a number of In¬ 
dian schools and keeps 
them up at a cost of sev¬ 
eral million dollars a year. 


“She hung the 
baby and cradle 
and" all from 
her shoulders.” 


Some tribes 
wrap up their 
babies in buck¬ 
skin bags. 


These are wigwams like that in which Eagle Heart was born. They are made of the 
skins of wild animals. 



























THE RED CHILD OF THE FOREST 


15 


If Eagle Heart’s sister was a merry little maid she might be 
called Laughing Water. Isn’t that a pretty name? Laughing Water 
had lessons to learn too. She had to help her mother take the skins 
from the wild animals the hunters brought home, and cut up and 
cook the meat. She had to help scrape the hair from deer skins with 
sharp clam shells, and rub and pull the skin until it was as soft as a 
kid glove. A needle she made of a fish bone; the thread of the leg 
tendons of the deer. Her thread was like our violin strings. It was 
very strong. Then she sewed the skins into shirts and leggings and 
moccasins and robes. She embroidered moccasins and belts with 
little shells, after boring holes through them; and she colored por¬ 
cupine quills and pushed them in patterns through the soft yellow 
skin. She colored long eagle feathers and made a warrior head-dress 
for her father. She made herself necklaces of shells. 

In the summer, the Indian women and girls dug holes in the 
fields, with pointed sticks or clam shells, and planted corn and beans, 
pumpkins and tobacco. Laughing Water had to gather the ripe 
corn, shell it, boil the grains in clay pots, dry them and pound them 
to meal in wooden bowls. She sifted the meal through a sieve she 
made of fine, tough grass. She wove baskets of reeds and grasses. 
If she had time she wove colored figures and lines in her pretty 
baskets. She made clay cooking pots and water jars, and she painted 
figures on them. One of the nicest things she did was to make candy. 
She made it by boiling the sweet sap of the maple tree. For her 
father, Laughing Water dried the broad tobacco leaves. He put these 
in a pipe with a stone bowl and a hollow reed stem, and smoked them. 

In the evening the whole tribe sat around a big fire under the 
maple trees. The tired hunters smoked and talked of the hunt, or 
of battles. Old men and women told stories of long ago. The Indians 
had no books, but their old stories were not lost. Grandfathers and 
grandmothers told these hero, tales to the children, and the children 
remembered the stories and told them to their grandchildren. Some 
day you must read “Hiawatha” and learn more about how the 
first American boy lived. 

Eagle Heart and Laughing Water thought their home would 
always be as it was then. They did not know that little children 
with pale faces were coming to live among them. 

See Plate “Natives of North America ,” Vol. I, page 60. Also 
see Indians, page 921; Aztec, page 150; Pueblos, page 1559. Also 
in Index under Indian see numerous references. 


.16 


THE LITTLE PALE FACES WHO CAME OVER THE SEA 


II. THE LITTLE PALE FACES WHO CAME OVER THE SEA 

Six year old Faithful was knitting a stocking. Her home was 
a pretty stone cottage with a thick roof of straw. It was in a 
village, in England. Roses grew around the open door. Through 
the door she could see the square, gray tower of a stone church. Ivy 
climbed the tower. The bell in the tower rang sweet chimes. The 
church had pointed windows of many-colored glass. The fences 
between the cottages were thick green hedges. A mill stood beside 
a dancing river. The mill-wheel churned the water to foam. On 
a hill top stood a castle in miles of green park, with a stone wall 
around it. Lords and ladies lived there. Sometimes they drove 
to the church in a gay coach, or they went away to the King’s court 
in London. They wore silks and laces and plumes and jewels. Little 
Faithful’s English home was as pretty as a fairy story. But her 
father often talked of going away to the New World of America, 
that Columbus had found, to live. They were all safe and com¬ 
fortable in England, but they were not happy. They dressed and 
lived more soberly than their neighbors. They liked to go to a 
plain meeting-house, instead of to the King’s stone church. For 
this they were punished. Unkind people mocked them, and called 
them Puritans. But they were proud of that name because they 
tried to live pure lives. 

Faithful wore a long, plain gown of dark wool. A square of 
white lawn was folded around her neck. On her head was a stiff 
white linen cap almost like a sunbonnet. Her little face w r as rosy 
and dimpled; her loving eyes as blue as violets. Her yellow hair 
just would curl, and that was a trouble. A little Puritan girl had 
to keep her hair smooth. She wore a white apron, with a pocket 
to hold her thimble and thread. The Puritans thought it wicked 
for even a little girl to be idle. Her brother Myles w T ore a wide- 
brimmed pointed hat, knee breeches and a tightly buttoned coat. 
He wore a wide, square-cornered white linen collar. Both of these 
children had big brass or silver buckles on their stout, low shoes. 

One day their father said they must get ready to go to America. 
Other Puritan families were going with them in a sailing vessel. 
They had to take ever so many things with them, for they could not 


SCENES IN THE PILGRIM STORY 





PROTECTED BY 
A GRANITE CAN- k 
OPY AND BY BARS # 
TO KEEP REL I Cl 
HUNTERS FROM 
CHIPPING IT 
AWAY, THE ROCK 
ON WHICH THE 


\ 


PILGRIMS LANDED 
STILL LIES AT 
THE WATER’S 
EDGE AT PLYM¬ 
OUTH WITH THE 
DATE OF THE 
LANDING CARVED 
UPON IT. 


Mayflow 
I shores 


En 


land 


The Pilgrims sadly watching the Mayflower as it sails back toward the comfortable 
homes in old England which they have given up for “freedom to worship God.’’ 


Even when they went to church the Pilgrims were obliged to go armed to protect 
themselves against attacks by the Indians. 




















THE LITTLE PALE FACES WHO CAME OVER THE SEA 


17 


buy even a paper of pins in America. They packed big chests with 
clothing and blankets and feather beds and table linen. Cooking 
pots and pewter dishes and candle sticks were put into barrels. 
The mother did not forget the spinning wheel and loom for weaving. 
The father thought of tools and seeds and guns and knives and 
fish nets. He put in a box of books, too. He did not take money. 
To trade with the Indians for furs, he took red blankets and ’calico 
and beads. 

*One hundred Pilgrims stood on the deck of the Mayflower and 
said goodby to the green shores of England. Every one of them 
could do something useful. There were carpenters and shoemakers 
and blacksmiths and farmers. There was a soldier to lead them 
if they had to fight the Indians. A minister went with them, and 
a wise man to govern them. Puritan mothers could do nearly 
everything to make people comfortable. The little girls could knit 
and sew and mind the baby. The smallest boy could whittle wooden 
shoe pegs. 

It was a long journey, in cold winter weather, over the sea. 
The Atlantic ocean is three thousand miles wide. Today we cross 
this ocean in steam-ships, in five days. But the Pilgrims came 
over three hundred years ago, in a little sailing vessel. The voyage 
took six weeks. Big waves beat the sides of the ship and rolled 
it almost over. The snow fell thick and ice covered the deck. Fogs 
shut them in, so they could not see where they were going. Ice¬ 
bergs as big as hills floated in the water, and they saw whales. By 
and by they saw sea gulls. They were near land. 

The land was not green and pleasant like England. All they 
saw was black rocks, bare forests and great fields of snow. The 
Pilgrims got into little boats and rowed over foamy breakers to 
this land. They knelt on the rocks and prayed and sang hymns. 
And they named the bleak coast New England, after their old home. 

How the trees fell in that forest! Twenty men with sharp 
axes chopped all day long. Soon the Pilgrims had warm log houses, 
with chimneys of clay and sticks. Doors of axe-hewn boards were 
hung on wooden hinges. Thick oiled paper covered the small holes 
left for windows, but there was plenty of light from the big fire of 
logs. The straightest logs were split and laid for floors. The car¬ 
penters made tables and stools and bedsteads. The blacksmith 

* This first company who landed at Plymouth Rock, were called Pilgrims: those 
who came later and settled at Boston were known as Puritans, 




18 


THE LITTLE PALE FACES WHO CAME OVER THE SEA 


swung long iron bars in the chimney to hang cooking pots over the 
fire. Everything was carried from the ship into the houses. Then 
the Mayflower sailed away home. The little pale faces were alone 
in the wide, wide, New World of America, with the red children 
of the forest. 

They had a great deal to show each other. The Indians brought 
corn and told the white people how to make mush and hominy. 
They brought maple sugar to make syrup. They had very small 
grains of corn that burst into flowers when they got hot. Wasn’t 
pop-corn a surprise? Faithful and her brother got fur hoods and 
mittens. They coasted on hillsides and ran on snow-shoes. They 
had baked Indian beans and pumpkin pudding to eat, and wild 
turkey with cranberries. In the summer they found wild grapes, 
plums and crabapples, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. 
In the fall there were nuts of many kinds. They gathered wax 
bayberries to make sweet smelling candles. The carpenters made 
boats to fish for big cod. The children dug clams from the sand 
on the beach. 

How cosy it was, in the log home in the evening! Half a tree 
could be put into the fireplace. The children ate their supper of 
hominy and syrup and deer meat from Indian bowls of wood. But 
they had white linen cloths and napkins. They brought their manners 
and their prayers and their school books to America. A woman 
taught them to read and write and spell and “cipher,” in one of the 
cabins. To “cipher” is to do arithmetic sums by hard rules. They 
learned their letters from a horn book. The horn book was more 
like a slate than a book. Their only reader was the Bible. Faithful 
read the Bible through three times, before she was twelve years 
old. Besides she helped her mother. In America she had to learn 
to sweep a room clean with an Indian birch broom, and to brush 
the hearth with a turkey wing. She spun flax and wove cloth. 
She made soap by boiling lye water, dripped through wood ashes, 
and animal fat together. This made strong, brown soft soap. 

Her brother went into the woods with his father to cut down 
trees. The forest land had to be cleared for fields, to grow corn 
and wheat and flax. Around every cabin was a little garden to 
grow peas and cabbages and flowers. Oh, how the children watched 
the first green sprouts come up. And how they clapped their hands 
when they saw the first English daisy or pink rose. The flowers 
made America seem more like a real home. In the fields and woods 


THE LITTLE PALE FACES WHO CAME OVER THE SEA 


19 


were violets and buttercups, as in England. One tiny, sweet-smelling 
flower that pushed its pink, waxy clusters and glossy leaves right 
through the snow, in the pine woods, was strange to them. This 
they called the Mayflower, after their dear little sailing ship. Once 
in many months a sailing vessel came and brought them things 
from England. When it sailed away it took the furs of bears and 
beavers and foxes to sell in London. 

Sometimes the Puritans and the Indians had dreadful battles. 
The red man wanted the forests for hunting, and the white man 
wanted the land for farms and towns. Every little settlement of 
white people had one big cabin that was both a meeting house and 
a fort. The men carried their guns and knives to church. They 
carried them when they went to the fields to plow. Sometimes they 
built high walls of pointed stakes around the village. After many 
years the Indians went deeper into the woods and left the country 
near the sea to the white people. The Puritans learned to love 
their home in New England. No one ever thought of going back 
to Old England. They had many little towns around a sea-port 
city called Boston. 

Other English people who were different from the Puritans 
came to America, but Faithful and Myles never saw the little drab- 
gowned, soft-spoken, Quaker children who lived near the town of 
Philadelphia. Neither did they see the English children who lived 
in big houses by the wide rivers of Virginia. America was so big 
that the towns were hundreds of miles apart. Little Dutch chil¬ 
dren came to America to live, too, and French children and Spanish 
children, but they all lived so far from each other that they could 
not pay visits. We can go to see them today. Do you know how? 

In the fairy story, when the Little Lame Prince, who was shut 
up in a tower, wanted to go to the land of Far Away or Long Ago 
he sat down on a magic carpet. Whisk! He sailed through the 
air as easily as a bird. 


20 


LITTLE WOODEN TWO SHOES 


III. LITTLE WOODEN TWO SHOES 

Let us follow the Mayflower as it sails back home. All the • 
white children who came to America had to cross the Atlantic ocean. 
We won’t stop when the ship comes to England. We will go farther 
over the sea. 

Why, what is this? Trees growing on the edge of the ocean, 
and no land at all! Yes, here it is. The land lies behind the 
trees and lower than the water. Wouldn’t you think the sea 
would roll in and drown the pretty red and yellow tulips in 
their beds? It would if the people had not built high banks of 
earth. These banks were called dykes. There w r ere wide roads, 
bordered by trees, on top of the dykes. Crossing the low country 
were other wide, high dykes. Long troughs were scooped out 
of the tops of them, and sea w T ater let in to make canals. Isn’t 
it funny to see ships sailing on these canals, away above the 
church steeples? The towns and farms lay in deep, green bowls 
of land. 

On the banks of the canals were windmills. The wind whirled 
the long, ladder-like arms. This turned big wheels in the wooden 
towers. Windmills ground flour and sawed wood and pumped 
water. The Dutch people built them in Holland where they lived. 
They made the wind do their hardest work. Weren’t the Dutch 
clever people? 

The people worked hard, too. Very early in the morning the 
men opened the shutters of the shop windows. The women scrubbed 
the door steps and swept the streets. Then they scrubbed the rosy 
faces of the children, put clean clothes on them and sent them to 
school. Their children, their houses, their neat brick towns, and 
even their farms, were so clean and bright that all Holland looked 
as if it was washed and ironed every day. 

Clump, clump, clatter! Here comes blue-eyed Gretel in her 
wooden shoes, with little tow-headed brother Hans after her. 
Wooden shoes were good for many things. Hans sailed his on the 
canal, like boats. Gretel used hers for dolly cradles. At Christmas 
Santa Claus filled their shoes with sugar plums. Every Saturday 
Dutch children scrubbed their shoes with soap and water, until they 
were as white as little mother’s kitchen table. 















LITTLE WOODEN TWO SHOES 


21 


Hans wore wide knickerbockers, a tight jacket and a little 
round cap. Gretel wore six bright wool petticoats, all at once. 
Her close, gold-braided cap had big rosettes over the ears. They 
skated on the canals in winter. They went to a big city called 
Am-ster-dam, in an ice-boat, with a sail. The wind sent the boat 
flying over the ice. 

Hans and Gretel came to America with other Dutch children. 
They lived on a long, narrow island in the mouth of the Hudson 
River. The island poked its blunt nose into the ocean, so ships 
could come up to it. It was higher than the water, so the Dutch 
did not have to build dykes. But they built a wall of stakes across 
the island to keep the Indians out. They built a windmill too. 
If there had not been lots of water the Dutch children would have 
been as lonesome in America as ducks in a meadow. The Dutch 
men were merchants. They bought furs of the Indians and sent 
them to Holland to be sold. When the ships came for furs they 
brought loads of bricks to build houses. A street of neat brick 
houses was built like the letter U around the blunt nose of the island. 
The fronts faced a green park; the gardens all ran down to the water. 
The Dutch called this town New Am-ster-dam. After many years 
English people came to live with the Dutch, and they named the 
town New York. Today nearly four million people live in New 
York. It is one of the biggest cities in the world. 

The great-grand-children of Hans and Gretel had two homes. 
One was a brown stone house in the city. The other was far up 
on the high, rocky bank of the Hudson River. It had a porch with 
white pillars, and forests and meadows were around it. They had 
a gay coach and fast horses to drive into the city, and they had a 
sail boat on the river. They spoke English instead of Dutch, and 
they wore leather shoes with buckles. They were Americans. They 
never dreamed of such a thing as going back to Holland. See New 
York, page 1334. 


22 


SHIP LOADS OF POLITENESS 


IV. SHIP LOADS OF POLITENESS 

Very near Holland lived other children who came to America. 
They were French. Their names were Louis and Jeanne. French 
people did not like to live alone, on separate farms. When the 
day’s work in the fields was done, they liked to visit each other. 
So they lived in farm villages. The stone cottages and barns, the 
cow sheds and chicken yards, and the kitchen gardens of twenty 
families, were all mixed up together in the friendliest way. Tall, 
slim poplar trees grew in the door yards. On a rock-cliff, above 
the village, was a gray stone castle with many pointed towers. In 
French it was called a chateau (chat-6). A noble lord lived there. 
He owned the farms and the village. Everybody had to pay rent 
to him. Farmers who went to America could own their land and 
houses. 

When Louis and Jeanne said goodby to their playmates their 
little faces were pale, their black eyes filled with tears. They kissed 
people, first on one cheek and then on the other. And they said: 
“Adieu, cher ami!” That was French for “goodby, dear friend, 
we will never see you again.” French children were polite. Polite¬ 
ness means both kind feelings and pretty manners. 

Louis and Jeanne came to America in one of a fleet of ships. 
On the big sailing vessel that led the fleet, was a company of the 
king’s soldiers, in gay uniforms. They had a band of music. A 
white flag with golden lilies on it floated from the mast. The soldiers 
were going to build a fort. On the other ships were miners to dig 
for gold, workmen and farmers. There were noble lords and ladies 
too, and black-robed priests, and nuns to teach the children. 

The French fleet sailed far south; south of Virginia, south of 
the rice and cotton fields. Then the ships turned west until they 
came to the wide mouth of the Miss'is-sip'pi River. Soon they passed 
a French town on the river bank. Its name was New Orleans. The 
fleet did not stop there. It sailed up the river hundreds of miles. 
The fort was built of lime stone from the high bluff that ran 
along the wide, brown flood of the Miss'is-sip'pi. 

Cannon were set up on the walls. Soldiers watched by the 
cannon. They did not watch for Indians. The Indians and the 


SHIP LOADS OF POLITENESS 


23 

French were good friends. They were friendly because the French 
were so polite. Louis called Eagle Heart his “wild brother.” Jeanne 
kissed Laughing Water on both cheeks, and gave her a red ribbon 
for her hair. The soldiers in the fort watched the Spanish people 
who lived on the western bank of the Miss'is-sip'pi. The French 
and the Spanish people both claimed the big river, and they quar¬ 
relled about it. They did not need to. There was plenty of room 
for both. 

In the shelter of the fort the farm village was built. The houses 
were not made of stone, as in France, but of squared logs, set on 
end and the cracks filled with plaster. The roofs sloped out over 
porches. Above the porches dormer windows jutted from the sloping 
roof. Roses and honeysuckles climbed the porches. There were 
cherry trees and peas in the garden, and tall slim poplar trees in the 
dooryards. In the evening there was gay talk and dancing. On 
St. John’s eve, in June, a bonfire was built. They could see other 
bonfires, of other French villages, along the river. This was a part 
of New France in America. 

The French built forts and towns on the St. Lawrence River, 
far to the north of the Puritans, in Canada. They called two of 
these towns Que-bec and Mon-tre-al. They built Detroit and other 
places on the Great Lakes. All along the waterways, far in the 
deep heart of America, you can today find places the French people 
named after their kings and saints. But the French soldiers went 
back to France long ago, and the forts crumbled. The French 
farmers and traders stayed in America. 

Louis and Jeanne learned to speak English, but they did not 
forget French. Today, thousands of people in Canada speak both 
English and French. Our warm, southern city of New Orleans is 
almost as French as many cities in France. If you should ever 
go to New Orleans you might come to know some pale, black-eyed, 
polite French children. When you go away they will kiss you on 
both cheeks, and say goodby. But sometimes they seem to forget 
that they are Americans. Then they say: “Adieu, cher ami.” 


LITTLE FRIENDS IN FURS 


24 


V. LITTLE FRIENDS IN FURS 

Before they came to America to live, the English and Dutch 
people were great sailors and traders. If they heard of anything 
they wanted, in far-away lands, they sailed away in stout ships 
to get it. As soon as they had a few seaport towns in America, 
they built sailing vessels. They needed some things that they could 
not buy in England and Holland. 

They needed oil for lamps. They had no gas. They had no 
electric lights that you turn on with little black buttons. They 
did not even have kerosene oil. They had only candles of tallow 
and wax, and not enough of those. In one place there was plenty 
of oil. Strong, brave men could go and get it without paying money. 
It was in the ocean. Would you ever think of looking for oil in the 
water ? 

The oil ships sailed north into cold, dark, stormy seas. Even 
in summer icebergs were all around them. The sun shone, day 
and night. It went ’round and ’round the sky in wide circles. 
Polar bears were on the ice. Swimming, yellow seal barked like 
dogs. Walrus showed their ivory tusks. Millions of eider ducks 
nested on the rocky shores. Whales spouted water when they 
came up to breathe. The oil ships had come for the whales. Under 
its rubbery skin the whale was wrapped in a thick blanket of fat. 
When it was melted this whale blubber made good oil for lamps. 

The whaling ships had to hurry to get back home before winter. 
In the far north it was night all the time, in the winter. The sun 
did not shine at all. The ocean froze over. Sometimes the sailors 
staid too long and their ships froze fast, in the ice. 

When this happened the sailors had to go on the land to live. 
The land was all ice and snow too, but there were people and warm 
houses. A village looked very queer. It was only a lot of dome¬ 
shaped mounds of snow. Rough dogs ran from low holes in the 
snow huts. They made such a noise that little furry heads popped 
out of the holes, too. If it had not been for their fat, human faces, 
the sailors might have thought these children were polar bear cubs. 
They were Es-qui-mos, a kind of small, brown Indians. They were 
good-natured and friendly. It was so cold that they had to wear 
the skins of animals. They had soft, warm stockings of eider duck 






| LIFE AMONG THE ESQUIMOS 

* 

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* 

# 

«■ 

* 

* 

* 

* 

* 

* 

* 

# 

* 

* 

* 

# 

* 

* 

* 

* 

# 

* 

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* 

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* 

:&• _ ___ 


T T SEEMS odd to think of 
-*- Esquimos jumping the rope, 
but this is one of their forms 
of amusement. As you see, it is 
not the children alone that en¬ 
joy it. Below is shown the in¬ 
side of an Esquimo hut. Isn't 
that a queer doorway? Per¬ 
haps this man is coming home 
to a meal. What do you think 
about it ? In summer these 
huts melt and are replaced by 
others of earth or hides, like 
those in the next illustration. 




In building these huts a circle is first traced, then slabs of packed snow are laid around 
this circle and a house built in the shape of half a globe—something like the sugar bowl 
hut of the children that live in the “Zoo.” 


*• 

* 


Copyright by Underwood <fc Underwood, N. Y. 

Summer camp of a very interesting tribe of Esquimos living in North Greenland. 







































































































LITTLE FRIENDS IN FURS 


25 


skin, with the down inside. Their polar bear skin jumpers had 
hoods. Their high boots were of reindeer skin. Es-qui-mo children 
were as warm and brown and greasy as buttered toast. 

The children showed the white visitors the way into the house. 
They stooped at the low hole and slid down a toboggan tunnel. 
They climbed into the middle of the house through a cellar door 
in the floor. This was a clever way to let people in and keep the 
wind out, wasn’t it? The house was built in a pit, of drift wood. 
Wrecked ships and uprooted trees floated to them from far-away 
lands. The frame work was covered with sod and moss. Snow 
fell thick on the house and froze solid. 

An Es-qui-mo house had no windows, not even a hole for the 
smoke to go out. A bench around the wall made a table, a bed, 
and seats for just as many men, women, babies and dogs as could 
crowd into the hut. They could hardly see each other for the smoke. 
The hut was warmed and lighted by earthen lamps that hung from 
the ceiling. These had moss wicks and burned walrus fat. Over 
the lamps meat was cooked in earthen pots. 

Ice-bound sailors often had to live with the Es-qui-mos all 
winter. They went hunting with the men. The stout dogs pulled 
the hunters on sleds made of animal bones. They killed seal and 
walrus and bears, with long spears called harpoons. It was not 
as dark as you w r ould think. The stars and moon shone on a white, 
frozen world. Sometimes there were lights brighter than our sun¬ 
sets; more wonderful than Fourth of July fire-works. They played 
all around the midnight sky in colored flames. They formed columns 
and crowns, curtains and banners. Ask mama to turn back to 
Volume I, page 140, and read to you about the Aurora Borealis. 

When the sun came back and the ice broke up, the whalers went 
home with a ship load of oil in barrels. Their friends thought they 
were lost in the icy seas. When they were old men they sat in the 
bright light of whale-oil lamps and told stories of their adventures. 
The white children never grew tired of hearing about Agh-a-ni-to 
and Ny-ack, who lived in a snow house and dressed like polar bears. 
See Eskimo, page 626. 


26 


CHILDREN FROM SPAIN 


VI. CHILDREN FROM SPAIN 

Other ships sailed away for sugar. They found sugar right 
here in the New World. When Columbus came across the sea, 
before any other white man, he came in a Spanish ship. He found 
warm islands and the mainland, far south of where the English and 
Dutch people afterwards came to live. Spanish people followed 
him. They were glad to find that sugar cane would grow in many 
parts of tropical America. Sugar was worth a great deal of money. 
Do you know, no one, not even kings, had enough sugar to eat until 
shiploads of it were sent to the Old World from America? 

Puritan and Dutch and Quaker lads often went as cabin boys, on 
the ships that sailed to the Spanish colonies for sugar. The farther 
south the ships sailed, the warmer it grew. The sun was high and 
bright; the sea and sky very blue. A steady wind blew all day 
long and filled the white sails. They passed dozens of green islands. 
On the islands were palm trees. One of the most beautiful things in 
the world is a palm tree, with a crown of green plumes, on the hill 
top of an island, against a blue sky. What would you think, then, 
of an island that was seven hundred miles long, and more than a 
hundred miles wide, lying in a sea as blue as indigo, and all its 
hill tops plumed with twenty-five kinds of palm trees? 

“O-o-o-o-h!” is what the cabin boys on the sailing vessels said, 
when they saw Cuba. It was such a big island! It was so lovely, 
so green, so rich in fruits and other food plants. It had such wide 
harbors for ships, and it lay among smaller islands, right where 
all the ships would have to pass to go to lands beyond. No 
wonder the Spanish people called Cuba “The Pearl.” No wonder 
they built their finest city in America, on the widest harbor of 
this jewel of an island. This city they named Havana. It was one 
hundred years old when the English and Dutch came to America 
to live. 

To get to Havana a trading ship had to run the flag of its 
country up the mast. Then it sailed through a narrow passage into 
the harbor. The city was guarded by castle forts. It had a high 
wall around it. Over the wall, church towers and palm trees and 
roofs of red tile could be seen. It looked like some old Spanish 
city sleeping in the sun. Perhaps a Spanish merchant, in white 


CHILDREN FROM SPAIN 


27 


cotton clothes and a palm-leaf hat, invited the captain and the cabin 
boy to his home for breakfast. 

Inside the walls of the city were low, one and two storied houses. 
They were colored pink and blue and lemon yellow. They were 
roofed with fluted red tiles from Spain. The streets were narrow. 
There was a public square, a palace for the royal governor, and a 
cath-e-dral where ladies went to church. They wore black gowns, 
and shawls of black lace on their heads. In the house they wore 
white or gaily colored silk. 

Juan (Wan) and Dolores (Dol'o-rees) ate their breakfast in the 
patio. The patio was the inside garden of a Spanish house. The 
house was built all around it. The patio was paved with marble. 
It was open to the blue sky. There was a fountain in it. Palms 
and pink o-le-an'ders, and orange trees with white blossoms and 
golden fruit, grew in tubs. It was cool and quiet. 

The children were cool and quiet, too. They wore white cotton 
clothes, and sandals without stockings. They had soft black eyes 
and pale, cream-tinted faces. They were very polite, but rather 
lazy. Negro slaves waited on them. They ate oranges and bananas 
and pineapples. They drank chocolate and cocoanut milk. They 
gave their visitors salted olives and sugary raisins from Spain. If 
a visitor admired anything they said: “Take it, senor; it is yours.” 
But unless it was some trifle he was not expected to take it. 

These Spanish children were rich—oh, very rich. Their father 
had been to Mexico, or Central America, or South America. He 
went with Span-ish soldiers who had guns and swords and cannon. 
They found Indians who were different from those in the north. 
These Indians had built cities and palaces and temples. Some of 
them had built stone roads over mountains and deserts. They 
worked the mines, and had treasures of gold and silver. But they 
had no guns or cannon. The Spanish soldiers killed the strong 
men, and made slaves of the children. They made these slaves go 
into the mines for more gold and silver. Most of them died. Ship 
loads of wealth were sent back to Spain. Rich Spaniards went back, 
too. Only some poor soldiers, and black slaves and dying Indians 
stayed behind, to build towns and make farms. After the gold 
and silver was all taken away, the Spanish king still kept soldiers 
and officers in Havana and other towns. He made all these poor 
people pay taxes. It was four hundred years before all these Spanish 
countries in America won their freedom from Spain. One of the 


28 


CHILDREN FROM SPAIN 


big Spanish islands belongs to us, today. It is called Porto Rico. 
It is near Cuba, and very much like it, but smaller. 

Cuba, “The Pearl” of all the islands, is free today, and our 
country watches over it so no big nation can steal it. You can 
go to Havana in a fast steamship. The castle-like forts are still 
there, guarding the harbor. The harbor is full of ships that come 
for sugar, tobacco and coffee berries, oranges, bananas and pine¬ 
apples and many other good things to eat. The president of Cuba 
lives now in the palace of the old royal governors. In the cath-e-dral 
you must take off your hats. It is a church, and besides Columbus 
is buried there. His bones were brought from Spain to the New 
World he discovered. Don’t you think that was right? White 
people and negroes, and even a few Indians live in Cuba. They 
are all free, now, and they all speak Spanish. The low houses under 
the palm trees are roofed with red tiles; the walls are painted pink 
and blue and lemon yellow. The little children eat their breakfast 
in the patio. If you admire anything that belongs to them they 
will bow politely and say: 

“Take it, senor; it is yours.” If the gift should be a little cage 
full of fire-flies I would take it. It would make a pretty lantern to 
flash and glow in the orange tree in the patio. See Cuba, page 485, 
and Havana, page 847. 


THE LITTLE BLACK CHILDREN WHO LIVED IN A “ ZOO ” 


29 


VII. THE LITTLE BLACK CHILDREN WHO LIVED 

IN A “ZOO” 

It was noon but the little boys and girls were all asleep, in the 
huts under the palm trees. No, they were not still asleep. They 
had got up with the sun, but when the sun was high and hot they 
went to bed again. Their fathers and mothers were asleep too. 

The huts were as round as big sugar bowls. You might think 
there was sugar inside of them from the swarms of ants and flies. 
The walls of the huts were made of bark, the cone-shaped roofs of 
long palm leaves. The trees and the river seemed to be asleep, 
and the comical monkeys in the trees, and the ugly crocodiles in 
the river. The leaves were wilted by the heat. Among the drooping 
leaves hung cocoanuts as big as baby brother’s head, and bunches 
of fat, yellow bananas. By and by a shower of rain fell and cooled 
the air. The rain was like the kiss of the prince in “ Sleeping Beauty.” 
The crocodiles yawned, the monkeys chattered, little black heads 
popped from the doors of the huts. Then the whole village of people 
tumbled out of doors. 

Such funny little boys and girls! You would have laughed to 
see them, and they would have laughed to see you. They were as 
happy as kittens and laughed at everything. They were black all 
over. That was easily seen for they had no clothes on at all. They 
had big, black eyes with very white rims. Their teeth were as 
white as ivory, and their hair curled tight to their heads in little 
knots. They laughed and cried and talked and screamed. They 
were as noisy as the monkeys in the trees. They were negro children. 
Their home was in the hot jungle of a far away country called Africa. 

Every child had his breakfast in his hands. Some had bread 
made from the flour of the manioc root. They all had baked yams, 
a kind of sweet potato; and ground nuts, something like our peanuts. 
The babies sucked sugar cane. Maybe some of them had eggs, for 
there were little speckled Guinea chickens in the village. They 
drank from long-handled gourds, and from cocoanut shells. They 
were as fat as little butter balls. 

These children could not swim in the river, for the crocodiles 
would bite them in two. They did not wash their faces. When 
they had put bracelets of iron and copper and ivory on their arms 


30 THE LITTLE BLACK CHILDREN WHO LIVED IN A “ ZOO ” 

and ankies; strings of bright feathers, colored bone beads and croco¬ 
dile teeth on their necks, they were dressed. The boys had aprons 
or capes of spotted leopard skin that they wore when they went 
with the men to hunt elephants and other animals. They carried 
spears and vine ropes and big baskets. Some went in palm-tree 
boats to hunt other animals that lived in the river. 

The women and girls planted yams and ground nuts in the 
fields. Slaves helped them. These slaves were black people like 
themselves, who had been captured in battle. The women made 
cooking pots of clay. They wove baskets and water jugs of reeds. 
Water jugs were woven very close, and the cracks filled with gum 
from trees, so they could not leak. Negroes did not have to work 
as hard as Indians, but they were always in danger of being carried 
away for slaves. 

In the evening the hunters came home with elephant tusks 
and baskets of meat. Perhaps it was the flesh of the hippo-pot- 
a-mus, a big water pig. Perhaps—why, it might have been almost 
any kind of wild beast! Lions and tigers and leopards; elephants 
and rhi-noc-er-oses and gi-raffes; striped ze-bras and swift an-te- 
lopes, and go-ril-las, or man monkeys with long hairy arms, and 
many more queer animals live in Africa. You can see them in cages 
in a men-ag-er-ie, or in the park zoo, today. Most of them are as 
terrible as their names. They did not often come into the villages, 
for they were afraid of the spears and traps. 

One noon-time, when everyone was sound asleep, a band of 
painted black warriors stole into this village and made all the people 
prisoners. Men and women and little children had to march along 
the river bank. The river grew wider, and marshy plains lay along 
the banks. After the plains was white sand, and miles of blue water 
with foam caps on the waves. The black children screamed with 
fright. They had never seen the ocean before. They were frightened 
again when a ship with white wings sailed into the river mouth. 
Worst of all they were driven into the darkest part of the ship, under 
the deck, by strange looking white men. 

Two hundred years ago black people were sold as slaves in 
many countries. Few people thought this was wrong. Ship loads 
of negroes were brought to America. The good Puritans bought 
some of them, and the gentle Quakers. Most of the slaves 
were sold in parts of America where it was warmer than in New 
England. 





Among all nations before mills are introduced, people must crush their own grain before 
they can bake it. In Africa they do this in mortars with big pestles. 


On the left is a group of African natives on the Zambesi river, and beside them a band 
of Zulus, a people who are particularly troublesome when on the warpath. 


You can guess from its name what animal is fond of the fruit of this giant monkey- 
bread tree. Compare it with the slender palm trees on the right and the huts there shown 
with the one back of the Zulu warriors. 


IN THE BLACK CHILD’S HOME 



















































A HAPPY NEGRO FAMILY IN ALABAMA. 





















































31 


THE LITTLE BLACK CHILDREN WHO LIVED IN A “ ZOO ” 

Virginia was warm and green like England. Many English 
people who came to live there were richer than the Puritans. They 
had large farms called plantations, and lived in big houses with 
white porches. Velvet lawns shaded by trees sloped to rippling 
rivers. Tobacco could be grown there, and that was worth much 
money in London. Slaves were bought to work in the tobacco 
fields. 

The negro slaves lived near the master’s house, in a village of 
log cabins. Calico dresses were given to the women and trousers 
to the men. The children had loose, short-sleeved shirts of tow 
linen. They slept in beds now, and sat on chairs and ate from tables. 
Everything was strange to them, even the way the white people 
talked. A boy or girl who learned quickly was taken from the field 
into the house. A little black boy might be called Sambo, a little girl 
Topsy. The negroes were not proud and brave like the Indians, 
nor were they cruel. They were never envious and hateful. The 
black “mammy” loved the little white baby she nursed. Sambo 
liked to catch the horses and ride with Master Roger. And Topsy 
liked to iron pretty dresses, to make frosted cake, and to powder 
and puff Mistress Evelyn’s hair, lace her rosy-flowered gown and 
buckle her satin slippers when she went to a ball. 

Many slaves were sold farther south than Virginia. They toiled 
in rice and cotton fields, cut sugar cane and picked coffee berries. 
You remember how the black children were always laughing and 
talking in the village of palm huts? Even after they became slaves 
in America they were happy, if they were warm and well-fed, and 
had kind masters who did not make them work too hard. On the 
plantations, in the evening, they talked and danced, and played on 
drums and bone rattles and banjos. Negroes have as sweet voices 
for singing as any people in the world. Sometimes the master’s 
family, sitting in the moonlight, stopped talking to listen to the 
negroes singing. Perhaps your mother or big sister knows some 
of these negro songs. Today we love to sing “ My Old Kentucky 
Home,” “Old Black Joe,” “ ’Way Down Upon the Suwanee River,” 
and many other pretty negro songs. 

The negroes were slaves in America for two hundred years. 
Then they were all set free. None of them want to go back to Africa, 
to the old wild life. They want to stay here and live like white 
people and send their children to school. They are Americans, too. 
They call themselves Afro-Americans. 


32 


BABES IN THE WOODS 


VIII. BABES IN THE WOODS 

Once they got started, people kept coming and coming and 
coming to America as if they never would stop! In our own part 
of North America, that is now the United States, three million people 
were living a hundred and fifty years after the Puritans came. There 
were many thousands of negro slaves. Most of the white people 
were English. We owned all the land from the Atlantic ocean to 
the Mississippi River. This land was fifteen hundred miles long 
and a thousand miles wide. ' But all those three million people lived 
on a narrow strip of land along the sea coast. They began to feel 
crowded. 

Why didn’t they move back from the sea, and spread over the 
land? They couldn’t. There was a wall. It was a wide, high, 
double wall of mountain ranges. The wall was nearly straight, 
but the seacoast bent in and out. Here the land ran away out into 
the water. There the water took a big bite out of the land. So 
in some places the seacoast land was more than a hundred miles 
wide. In others it was much narrower. The Indians were pushed 
and pushed back by the white people. At last they went over the 
mountain wall. They went by a trail that the white men could not 
find for a long time. 

White men lived far up on the mountain slopes. The land 
there was rough, rocky hills. It was not good for growing corn 
and wheat. Men had to hunt like Indians to get enough to eat. 
They were strong and brave and hardy. They could do everything 
the Indians did. Much of the time they lived in the woods. While 
in the mountains back of the Virginia plantations, a party of white 
hunters found the Indian trail over the wall. It was through a 
high, narrow valley. The Cum-ber-land River started there, in 
mountain springs. It cut a deep pass through which men could 
ride on horseback. The pass was called Cum-ber-land Gap. 

These daring hunters went through the Gap and down the 
Western slope. They built no fire. They kept their food pouches 
filled, their moccasins tied to their guns. They rolled in blankets 
at night, and slept on their guns. They thought the Indians might 
see them. On the least alarm they slipped into the deep woods. 
One morning they saw a park-like country at their feet. There 


BABES IN THE WOODS 


33 


were miles and miles of green meadows, with bright rivers and giant 
trees. The park was full of deer and other game. 

The white men made up their minds to stay in this fair wilder¬ 
ness. They built some cabins inside a log fort More men, and 
a few women and children were hurried over the Gap, and into the 
rude fort. A white baby was born there. There was even a wedding 
in the fort. Then began a life of daring and danger of many years. 
The earliest Puritans had not lived so hard a life as these hunters 
in Kentucky and Tennessee. They were hundreds of miles from 
the French towns on the Mississippi. The mountain wall was behind 
them. Ships could not come to them. They could neither buy 
nor sell anything. 

Some years they dared not go outside the forts to grow' corn. 
The men slipped out to hunt. Sometimes they did not come back. 
The Indians followed them and killed them. Sometimes painted 
red warriors danced around a fort. Very little boys had to learn 
to shoot, to protect their mothers and sisters. But more w r hite 
people came. A hundred came for every one killed. They found 
another trail over the mountains to the Ohio River. They came 
down this river in keel boats. The Indians shot at them from the 
banks. Fleets of canoes followed the keel boats. Then soldiers 
came and fought battles w r ith the Indians, so white people could 
live in that country. At last, after thirty-five years, there were 
little log towns and lonely cabins, scattered all through Kentucky 
and Tennessee. 

Daniel Boone was one of the hunters who built the first forts. 
Find the story about him. Then we w r ill tell you the story of a 
boy who w r as born when Daniel Boone was more than seventy years 
old. He was born in one of the lonely cabins in the woods of Ken¬ 
tucky. That was one hundred years ago. We will learn how he 
lived, w T hat he did, and what kind of a man he became. 


34 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 


IX. PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 

It was a cold morning in mid-winter, one hundred years ago. 
Around the little log cabin the snow lay deep among the stumps 
of trees in the clearing. A zig-zag fence of rails was around the 
field and the cabin. Blue smoke rose from the chimney of sticks 
and clay. You could easily have gone into the cabin because there 
was no door. A buffalo robe was hung before the doorway for a 
curtain. Wild beasts from the forest—bears and wolves and wild¬ 
cats—could have gone in, too, but wild animals will not go near 
a fire. A big fire of logs burned in the fire-place. 

What a wretched place to live! It was not much better than 
an Indian wigwam. The fire was the only splendid thing in the 
cabin. No, another beautiful thing was there. It was a pale young 
mother with a new baby. They lay on a bed of corn husks. It 
was raised from the floor on a frame work of poles. Over the mother 
and baby was a bear skin to keep them warm. The mother was not 
strong, but she was brave and sweet. She was glad the baby boy 
was big and strong, for he would have to work hard. 

Presently, they had a visitor. It was a ten year old boy. His 
cheeks were red with the cold, and he was out of breath. He had 
run two miles, through the woods, to see the new baby. There were 
more wild-cats than babies in the woods of Kentucky. Besides, 
this baby was his cousin. He said that he was “tickled to death” 
to have a boy cousin. The boy was dressed in yellow deer-skin 
like an Indian. He wore moccasins, and a coon-skin cap with the 
tail hanging to his neck. A woman came and dressed the baby 
in yellow flannel and tow linen. She cooked some hominy and deer 
meat. She stewed some dried blackberries in wild honey. Then 
she went back to her own cabin, miles away through the woods. 
The boy stayed. At night he rolled up in a bear skin and slept by 
the fire place. The father went hunting so they could all have food. 

Little boys had to grow up very fast in the back woods of Ken¬ 
tucky. When this baby was five years old he could catch fish, set 
traps for rabbits, get wood for his mother, and drop corn in the 
furrows, behind his father’s plow. He went on coon hunts with 
men and dogs. He followed flying bees and found their honey in 
hollow trees. His father was a good carpenter, but nobody had 


EMIGRANTS MOVING WEST IN COVERED WAGONS, OFTEN CALLED PRAIRIE SCHOONERS. 






































PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 


35 


money to pay for carpenter work. He had to hunt, and fish, and 
grow corn, and chop trees and burn stumps. He had no time to 
put a floor in his cabin. The land was too poor to grow much corn. 
When the boy was eight years old the father said they must move 
a hundred miles away to get a better farm. 

The mother packed everything that was worth taking with 
them, on the backs of two horses. The family walked. The big 
cousin drove a cow. The father carried a gun and shot game for 
their supper. When they came to the Ohio River they made a 
big raft of logs for a flat-boat. Even the horses and the cow went 
on the raft. The men pushed it across with long poles. The water 
was too wide and deep for the horses to swim. Then they were in 
a new state called Indiana. 

They built a pole shack in the woods. A pole shack was a 
shed, open on one side. It wasn’t nearly as good as a wigwam. The 
fire was outside. They lived in the shack a year. The boy was 
only nine, when the mother died, just as they got a good cabin built. 
Little, tired, wildwood lady! That life was too hard for her. 

The boy helped his father and cousin saw boards from a green 
log to make a coffin. He whittled pegs to fasten the boards together. 
They had no nails. They buried the mother under maple trees, 
near where the deer came down to drink. The boy never forgot 
how his mother died. As long as he lived his eyes were sad, his 
lips tender. He pitied and loved and helped everything weak and 
helpless. 

That lonely winter he studied his spelling book. His mother 
had told him that his grandfather came from good people in Vir¬ 
ginia. She taught him to read and write. She told him he must 
study. By and by, a good stepmother came. She had three chil¬ 
dren so it was not so lonely in the cabin. She had a wagon load 
of tables and beds and chairs and blankets and dishes. She had 
a spinning wheel and a loom. The stepmother was a strong, kind, 
clever woman, who made everyone comfortable and happy. She 
found out that the boy loved books, and she helped him all she could. 

He walked twenty miles to borrow a big law book. His cousin 
gave him a book of fables. He split cord wood to buy a little Life 
of Washington. He kept a book in the bosom of his checked shirt. 
At noon he sat under a tree and read a book, as he ate a dry, hard, 
corn dodger for his dinner. In the nearest village, he read a news¬ 
paper in a log store. When he grew up he knew more than any 


3(j 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 


man in the country. He could do more work, too, for he was tall 
and strong. He would not quarrel, and he made other men stop 
fighting. Everyone laughed at his funny stories. They wondered 
at his wise talk. He was so honest that he was called “ Honest 
Abe.” Now you know who he was. He was our great president, 
Abraham Lincoln. 

Lincoln wanted to see the world. He went down the Ohio 
River, and on down the Mississippi River. He had no money for 
travelling. He went as a deck hand on a river boat. He saw the 
towns along the rivers, and the big, warm, French city of New 
Orleans. For a long time he thought he would learn to be a pilot, 
to guide boats safely on the big river. 

When he was twenty-one Lincoln’s father moved again. They 
went west into Illinois. They moved in covered wagons drawn by 
oxen. They drove for two hundred miles, through woods, across 
swamps and over the grassy prairies. The new home was built on 
a river bank. Lincoln helped his father build a cabin. He split 
rails to make a fence around the corn field. Then he left home 
to make his own way in the world. The women cried to see him 
go. The men gripped his big hand. They all loved him. 

He went to clerk in a village store. It was a big, busy town 
of thirty log houses. The school teacher taught Lincoln grammar. 
He studied law by himself. He had no money to buy books. In 
a larger town, twenty miles away, were lawyers. They loaned law 
books to Lincoln. Still, he had to work for a living. He was a 
storekeeper and postmaster. He split rails, and he measured land, 
to mark off farms and roads. There were six years of hard work 
and lonely study, before he had learned enough to be a lawyer. 
Then he went away from the village to the state capital to live. 
More than twenty years later, when our country needed a brave, 
honest, wise man for a leader, in troubled times, it turned to this 
Western pioneer lawyer. 

Thousands of boys were born in just such cabins in the woods. 
Thousands grew up into good and useful men. They made farms. 
They built towns and railroads. They were cur great grandfathers. 
We are proud of them. But we are proudest of all of Lincoln. And 
we are proud of the worn-out mothers, who died so long ago of the 
hardships of pioneer days. If our great grandmothers could just 
have lived to know what men they gave to the world! See Lincoln, 
Abraham, page 1073. 


WHAT “LIEBE MUTTER” BROUGHT TO AMERICA 


37 


X. WIIAT “LIEBE MUTTER” BROUGHT TO AMERICA 

Once upon a time a woman was packing everything, just as 
the Puritans did, to come to America. She was a German woman. 
The children called her liebe mutter (dear mother). She was like 
“ the old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she ”— 
could not possibly leave one of them behind. There were at least 
ten of them. If you stood them in a row, with big Wilhelm at the 
head and baby Fritz at the foot, their yellow heads made ten stair 
steps. There was Frieda and Christine and Carl, Louise and Gustav 
and Minna, Gertrude and Otto. They all had very blue eyes, and 
very red cheeks, and very stout legs and arms. 

Liebe mutter packed everything that was needed, and bundled 
up the children. Then she tucked something else in for the chil¬ 
dren. It was something every German child had once a year. The 
children of the King had it in the palace, and the children of the 
baron, in the castle on the rocks above the Rhine River. The chil¬ 
dren of the peasants who picked grapes in the baron’s vineyards 
had it, too. It was the prettiest, the gayest, the happiest thing in 
the world. Sometimes it cost a great deal of money, and sometimes 
it cost nothing but loving thoughts and a little work. So you see 
the poorest child could have it, and the richest couldn’t do without 
it. It was no trouble to carry it across the sea because it did not 
weigh anything, or take up any room in the ship. 

Guess what it was! You have three guesses and a wish! 

We don’t know just where this German family went to live in 
America. A great many Germans came, and they lived everywhere. 
If they stayed in a city they had butcher shops and bakeries. Some¬ 
times they had little del-i-cat-es'-sen shops, where they sold rye 
bread and sausages, cottage cheese and smoked fish and sauer kraut, 
and other good German things to eat. They had market garden 
farms and dairy farms in the country. Away out west, in the villages 
of logs, they had water mills and cooper shops and shoe shops, or 
they had big farms. Wherever they went they soon had good 
homes. They fed and dressed their children well, and put them 
in school and taught them to work. And wherever they went 
they took that gay, happy, beautiful thing for the children. 
They took it across the ocean, over the mountains, down the 


38 WHAT “ LIEBE MUTTER” BROUGHT TO AMERICA 

rivers and out on the prairies. When the right time came they 
unpacked it. 

There was just one right time. That was when the snow was 
on the ground and the sleigh bells were jingling. Then liebe fader 
went into the deep woods with an axe and a horse blanket. He 
came back after night, when the ten children were asleep under 
the feather-bed quilts. He stole into the house like a thief, and 
he smuggled a big horse-blanketed bundle into the spare room, 
and locked the door. Then he and liebe mutter laughed. They 
had a dear secret. 

Everyone in the house had secrets. The children whispered 
and giggled and hid things. At last, one evening, the neighbors 
were asked to come in. They could come, just as well as not, for 
they had no secrets locked up in their houses. Then liebe mutter 
opened the locked door. 

Oh, my goodness! Did you ever in your life see such a sparkling 
fairy of a tree? Candles blazed like stars all over it! It had strings 
of popcorn and strings of scarlet seed-hips of wild roses on it, and 
gilded nuts and cotton snow. There were wooden blocks and toys 
father had whittled, and leather balls, and rag dollies mother had 
stuffed and dressed. There were bags of molasses candy, and German 
honey and nut cakes, and gingerbread men and animals, and pop¬ 
corn balls. Red mittens and scarfs were on that tree, and birch- 
bark work boxes, and feather dusters of rooster tails and—. Oh, 
dear, it w T ould take a book to tell all there was on those first Christ¬ 
mas trees in America. And it would take another book to tell all 
that grew out of it. 

You see, it didn’t cost anything except a little work and loving 
thought, and it made everybody so happy! The neighbors went 
home from that Christmas joy in German homes, all over America, 
and they said: 

“Next year, we’ll have a Christmas tree, too, for the children.” 


THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER 


3‘) 


XI. THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER 

If the German people brought the Christmas tree to America 
the Irish brought us something for every day in the year. It was 
like the milk in the mi-rac-u-lous pitcher. No matter how much 
was given away the pitcher was always full. 

You wouldn’t think people so poor would have anything at all 
to give away. Why, they were so poor the children were hungry. 
There were Kathleen and Nora and Pat, Larry and Tommie and 
baby Mary. They lived in a little gray plastered cottage in Ireland. 
The floor under their bare feet was black earth, the straw roof leaked 
in wet weather. The farm was just one acre for growing potatoes. 
A lot of potatoes can be grown on an acre of ground if the weather 
is just right. But some years there was too much rain and the 
potatoes rotted. Some years there wasn’t enough and the potatoes 
grew no larger than marbles. One dreadful year many people in 
Ireland starved. In thousands of cottages there wasn ’t enough to eat 
in September. It was plain the potatoes would not last all winter. 

The black pot was not half filled, but it bubbled bravely above 
the peat fire in the open grate. The potatoes made a small heap on the 
bare table. Father and mother just pretended to eat so the children 
could have enough. The mother said she didn’t care for new pota¬ 
toes until they got old. That was an Irish joke. It made everybody 
laugh. Then the father said he would have to step across the sea 
to England and do some real work to get an appetite. There were 
two jokes, for the Irish sea was eighty miles wide, and he worked 
at home all the time. Kathleen gathered up the peelings and two 
of her own potatoes to feed the pig. Poor pig, he couldn’t see 
the joke. When he was hungry he squealed. 

Why didn’t they eat the pig? They couldn’t. He was “the 
good little fellow who paid the rent.” When father sold him the 
money was sent to the great nobleman who owned the potato patch 
and the wretched little cottage. He lived in London. All the land 
for miles around belonged to him. Hundreds of such poor families sold 
their pigs to pay rent to him. He was very rich. Ship loads of corn 
were sent from America to feed people, and England sent food and money 
too. Still, of Ireland’s eight million people, three million were hungry. 
It was hard to get enough food to them and some really did starve. 


40 


THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER 


The Irish people have light hearts and merry tongues and loving 
words, and these helped them bear the hunger in the great famine. 
In thousands of Irish cottages it was pet names every other minute. 
When things were at their very worst fairy god-mothers flew over 
the sea by thousands. They were letters. In every letter was money. 
The money was sent by uncles and aunts and cousins, and big 
brothers and sisters, who had gone to America long before. All these 
letters said: “Use this money to come to America where there is 
plenty to eat.” Why,'that money was like the magic wand that 
turned Cin-der-ella into a princess. It bought new clothes and 
shoes; put roses into pale cheeks. It paid for a grand journey on the 
sea, and set them all down, right side up, in a new home in America. 

The only tool the farmer needed was his potato spade. We 
were digging canals and building railroads then, in America, and any 
man who could use a spade could earn money. The Irishman was 
such a good worker, and so quick to learn new ways, that he was soon 
“boss” of the other men. The children were sent to school. Tommie 
became a lawyer, Pat the Mayor of the city and Larry a soldier. 
The Irish people always got up in the world when they came to 
America. In Ireland they had no chance. 

Kathleen was a school teacher and all the children loved her. 
It w r as like Mary’s little lamb. Kathleen loved the children, and 
she told them so. Do you know the good Puritans thought it wrong 
to love people too much—as if you could! And pioneer life was 
so hard it often made people hard, too. Wasn’t that too bad? So, 
by and by, we forgot how to tell people that we loved them. Then 
the Irish people came over and showed us how. They scattered 
jokes and loving words around as free as sunshine. 

Kathleen was a darling of a teacher. She had violet-blue eyes 
with smiles in them. She had red-brown curling hair, a merry laugh 
and golden freckles on her nose. When she wanted a child to do 
anything she’d say ‘Jimmie-dear” just as if it was all one word, 
or “Pet Marjorie” or “Honey Bee.” The children just flew to do 
things for Miss Kathleen. Other people began to find out that they 
had loving words, packed away in their hearts and getting rusty. 
They took them out and polished them and used them every day. 
No matter how many they used they had just as many left. You 
see it was like the milk in the mi-rac-u-lous pitcher. 

Wasn’t that a nice thing to bring to America? See Ireland, 
page 936. 



Copyright 1 >y Underwood and Underwood 

A HOSPITABLE HOME IN IRELAND. 
“Fine day. sir, and welcome.” 








THE GOLDEN FLEECE OF AMERICA 


41 


XII. THE GOLDEN FLEECE OF AMERICA. 

Did you ever hear the old Greek story of Jason who sailed away 
to find the golden fleece? Many people think this a story of the 
world-old hunt for gold mines. Nearly every people has some such 
story in its history. We have one in our history. Some of your 
grandfathers can remember when gold was found in California. Some 
of them were Jasons themselves. They can tell you how they sailed 
away in prairie schooners (skoon-ers) in search of gold. Prairie 
schooners were not ships. They were covered wagons drawn by horses 
or oxen. The seas they sailed were seas of prairie grass. 

Don’t be ashamed to ask where Cal-i-forn-ia is. Sixty years 
ago grown up people had to ask where it was and how to get there. 
They found, out that a bird in New York City would have to fly 
overland three thousand miles, straight west, to get to Cal-i-forn-ia. 
People wished they had wings too. On half of that land no white 
people were living. One thousand miles was over high mountains 
and deserts. It was a terrible journey. Still a great many people 
went. They thought they would be happier if they had more money. 

Men left fields half plowed, houses half built. They sold their 
farms and shops. In the East they hurried to New York to catch 
ships, for you could go a long way around by sea. In the West they 
hurried to Chicago. Chicago was the most western city. It had 
twenty thousand people. There the gold-seekers bought horses and 
oxen and covered wagons. They bought flour and bacon and beans; 
blankets and clothing; guns and tools and water barrels. Eighty 
thousand men, some women and a few children really went to Cali¬ 
fornia in that way, the first summer after gold was found. They 
went in big parties because it wasn’t safe to go alone. All the kinds 
of people who were in America went. 

For five hundred miles west of Chicago there were small towns, 
corn and wheat fields and lonely cabins. Omaha was just a fort in 
the Indian country. Near it was a French fur-trading post. You 
remember the French children who came up the Mississippi, don’t 
you? Then it was just wil-der-ness. The fierce Sioux, the Om-a-has 
and the Paw-nee Indians lived there. Great herds of buffalo fed on 
the high, dry, grassy plains. There were no trees at all except along 
the few wide rivers. But, oh, the flowers! Millions of them, red 


42 


the golden fleece of America 


and blue and yellow and white, starred the green or brown grass. 
The land climbed slowly for five hundred miles, until the plain was 
a mile above the sea. The air was very pure and clear. Fifty miles 
away people could see the mountains. 

One morning the children climbed out of their beds in the 
covered wagons to see a wall of mountains. It stood nearly two miles 
high above the plains. Forests were up the sides, snow on the tops. 
It took days to cross these mountains through high, winding passes, 
although they were only twenty miles wide. Brown bears and black 
bears and grizzly bears were in those mountains, and big-horn sheep, 
m the wide valley behind them w r ere elk and deer, coy-otes, a kind 
of small wolves, and villages of prairie dogs. After that came 
mountains again, and then the wide, burning desert. 

Here and there, in the desert, was bunch grass for the horses 
and oxen, but most of the time tjiere was nothing growing but sage 
brush and thorny cactus. Little rivers trickled through deep gorges. 
Sometimes the water was bitter with soda. Streams sank away in 
the sand. Coy-otes howled at night. Black buzzards circled around 
the sky. There were rattle-snakes and stinging scor-pions. 

Whenever water was found the barrels were filled, and every 
drop was used carefully. Without water the horses and oxen died. 
Then, everything was left behind and people stumbled across the 
burning land. Some died on the way. Those who found water came 
to another steep mountain range. From the top of this they looked 
down a long, gentle slope. It was green with trees and bright with 
mountain brooks. At the bottom was a wide, green valley and a 
river. Gold, in little grains and lumps, was mixed with the sand 
and gravel in the river beds. 

Mining camps sprang up all along the streams. The miners 
stood in the water. They scooped up pans full of gravel and sand 
and washed out the gold. A few men found a great deal of gold 
and became rich. Most of the miners found little. But very few 
people went home again. The journey was too hard. Besides, Cal-i- 
forn-ia had many other kinds of wealth. Today we call it the Won¬ 
derland of America. See California, page 308. 


t • ■ 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND 


XIII. ALICE IN WONDERLAND 

Alice never forgot the time she went to California with her 
grandpapa. Grandpapa was going back to California. The first 
time he went in an ox-wagon, when he was ten years old. Now he 
was going back from New York City in a palace car. Grandpapa 
was seventy and Alice was ten. She was young enough to be foolish, 
and grandpapa was old enough to forget that he had ever been wise. 
So they went to California together, and they had a perfectly grand 
time. 

Part of the fun came from grandpapa’s pretending. You know 
a great many grown people can’t pretend a bit. Grandpapa pre¬ 
tended that everything would look as it did when he was a boy. 
He told Alice Chicago would be a little city of twenty thousand people. 
He asked the colored porter of the car how big it was 

“ ’Bout two million people, suh!” 

“ My, my, how it has grown since I was a boy, ” said grandpapa. 
Alice laughed and grandpapa’s eyes twinkled. He pretended to be 
surprised all the time. Om-a-ha was a big city too. There was no 
fort, no fur-trading post, no Indians, no herds of buffaloes. The 
grassy plains were covered with wheat and cornfields and busy towns. 
In front of the mountain wall was Denver, a city of more than one 
hundred thousand people. 

The iron horse climbed right over the mountains. The railroad 
looped around the curves. It ran along the edges of cliffs, and through 
long snow-shed tunnels. “Now,” said grandpapa, “you’ll see bears 
that are bears. Don’t the bears come down to the stations, and 
give you bear hugs, sometimes?” he asked the porter. 

“ No, suh, not that I evah noticed, suh. I reckon they done 
gone fah back in the mountains, suh!” 

“Too bad, too bad,” said grandpapa. “No bears, no big-horn 
sheep, no deer, no elk. Well, hello, there are some prairie dogs, 
barking at the train!” There were a few Indians at the station too, 
and flocks of woolly sheep on the mountain sides, with shepherds 
and collie dogs, and in the valleys were cattle, and cowboys on 
ponies. The snow peaks were there, and the dusty desert. But 
every once in a while they came to a mining town high up on a 


41 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND 


shelf of rock, or a green valley with canals running through farms. 
The water had been brought down from the mountains to make the 
desert bloom. In the very dryest part of the desert they found Salt 
Lake City, with sixty thousand people, in a big valley between 
mountains. The valley was all farms and orchards. The city streets 
were shaded by great trees, the houses set in green lawns. The train 
ran right across Great Salt Lake, twenty-five miles. Bathers were 
in the lake. They bobbed around like corks. The water was so salt 
they could not sink. The train climbed another steep mountain range, 
then slid down a long toboggan slope, through forests. 

“Now,” said grandpapa, “I know where I am. I’ll show you 
where I helped my father wash gold out of the gravel in the river 
bed. It’s just below in the valley. ” 

This time he wasn’t pretending. Ke really thought he could 
find the place, but the mining camp was gone. Gold mining was 
done up in the mountains. It was done in mills that crushed the 
gold-bearing rock. The river banks were lined with towns and farms 
and golden wheat fields. On the hill sides were flocks of sheep. 
The river grew wider. It met another river flowing north. They 
ran together and into wide water. 

“Where are they going now?” asked Alice. 

“Through the Golden Gate, to where the sun sets.” 

There was a big city built up the hill sides above the water. 
At its feet lay a wide harbor full of ships. Across the harbor they 
looked through a narrow strip of water walled with rocks. It was 
like a thick stone gate. Through the gate they saw the sun set in a 
great ocean. The city was called San Francisco. It’s nickname was 
City of the Golden Gate. Alice wondered what lay out there over 
the wide water, where the sun set. She asked if they could get one 
of the ships and go to see. 

“ By and by, when we have seen the City of the Queen of the 
Angels. ” 

Alice hugged herself. This was as good as a fairy story. She 
hadn’t the least idea how it was coming out. Have you? 

After they left the City of the Golden Gate they saw mountains 
two miles high, with lakes at the bottoms of their dark green 
pockets. They saw rivers sunk half a mile, and lined with steeples 
and towers of rock. Then they came to the Valley of Delight. 
Grandpapa called it Yo-sem-i-te Valley. There they left the train 
and got on a stage coach. One whole day Alice rode on a donkey. 



© F. E. COMPTON Sc CO. 

' DENVER AND THE MOUNTAINS 

Here is beautiful Denver, as Alice saw it “in front of the mountain wall,” and the railroad that “loops and runs 

along the edges of the cliffs.” 















ALICE IN WONDERLAND 


45 


They slept in a camp hotel. The valley was a mile deep. It was 
walled with mountains. Rivers fell from the tops of the cliffs. They 
tumbled after each other like Jack and Jill. A river jumped down a 
quarter of a mile. That was such fun, that it took a little run over 
rocks and jumped again. It played hide-and-seek and follow-the- 
leader and leap-frog down the rocks. Sometimes a falling brook 
spread out in a broad sheet. Sometimes it fell so far that it turned 
to spray and looked like a bride’s long veil. The sun shone on the 
spray and turned it to rainbows. 

Alice had no time to catch her breath before the next wonder. 
This was trees more than three hundred feet high and thirty feet 
thick. She had to lie on her back to see the tops of them. The trees 
looked very, very old. She thought they must have been born in 
the days when giants lived. 

‘ ‘Were they here when Columbus came to America?” Alice asked. 

“ Oh, yes, some of them were eight hundred years old when 
Columbus came. ” 

Dear, dear! Alice wondered if they weren’t tired standing and 
holding the blue sky up so long. Little white clouds seemed to be 
tangled in their evergreen leaves. 

The farther south they went the warmer and dryer it became. 
Still there were wheat fields and sheep. By and by there were 
orchards of gray-green olive trees, and vineyards of big white grapes 
on gravelly hillsides. Some of the farms had queer houses of sun- 
dried yellow bricks, and with flat roofs. Many of the people were 
darker, with big black eyes. Every town and river was called “San” 
or “Santa” something. Grandpapa said that was Spanish for Saint. 

Why, how did the Spanish people ever get away over into 
Southern California? Alice asked a sheep rancher that, as she drank 
milk and ate figs as sweet as honey in the patio of a farm house. Do 
you remember the patios in the houses in Cuba? He took off his 
broad-brimmed, gold-laced, pointed hat very politely, and said that 
he did not know. They had been there a good while. Then she 
asked a priest at an Indian mission church. He said the Spanish 
people came up from Mexico to live, many, many years before gold 
was found. The Spanish people made a garden out of the desert. 
They brought seeds and plants from Mexico, and they coaxed water 
down from the mountains. Many of the gold seekers did not go back 
home. They went down the valley five hundred miles to the Spanish 
towns, and they made more farms and towns near the sea around 


46 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND 


Los Angeles. The Spanish had built a town there of sun-dried 
bricks, and called it the City of the Queen of the Angels. Now it 
was a great, rich American city of three hundred thousand people. 

No wonder the Spanish people called it that! For hours and 
hours the train ran south through fairy land, and into summer weather, 
although it was Christmas time. It ran through orchards of orange 
and lemon trees, through grapes and figs and plums, through groves 
of almond and walnut trees and olives. The towns were hidden by 
trees, the houses covered with roses. There were palm trees, and 
hedges of ger-an-i-ums, ten feet high. 

Right over the city of Los Angeles were mountains with snow 
on them. A real Christmas tree was brought down from the moun¬ 
tains. On New Year’s day there was a flower festival. Hundreds of 
carriages and au-to-mo-biles were covered with roses. Flower fairies 
rode in open cars. Alice was a white orange blossom in a bride’s 
wreath of little girls. Thousands of people watched the flower pro¬ 
cess-ion. Alice was so happy she couldn’t sleep a wink that night. 
She wanted to live in the Citv of the Angels forever. See California, 
page 308, San Francisco page 1671, and Los Angeles, page 1116. 


THE CHILDREN OF TOPSY-TURVY LAND 


47 


XIV. THE CHILDREN OF TOPSY-TURVY LAND. 

Wouldn’t you like to visit some children who never cry when 
they are babies? No, they are not Indians, although they ride around 
on their mother’s backs. Their faces are yellow. Their almond- 
shaped black eyes are slanting. They wear ki-mo'nos. They wipe 
their little noses on little paper handkerchiefs that they carry up 
their wide sleeves. 

Japanese children! You have seen them in picture books. But 
how shall we really go to see them ? 

Let us go back to the City of the Golden Gate. One part of it 
is like fairy stories. The fronts of the shops are covered with red 
and gold dragons. This is called Chinatown because the Chinese 
people live there. If we hunt a long time maybe we will find a 
Japanese shop. The merchant is yellow, like the Chinese, but he 
wears American clothes and cuts his hair short. He speaks very 
good English. We will buy some tea, or a roll of silk, or a blue and 
white china bowl. If we are very polite, and we tell him we are 
going to get on a ship and go to Japan, perhaps he will give us a 
letter, and ask us to call on his brothers and sisters in Tok-io. Won’t 
that be fine to visit Japanese children in their own home? 

We get on the big steamship. It is not like the little sailing 
vessel—the Mayflower—that the Puritan children came in, three 
hundred years ago. It is a floating hotel, six stories deep, a hundred 
feet wide and as long as a city block. We sit on the roof of the ship. 
It is called the deck. The ship plows its way across the ocean. It 
goes very fast, but it takes days and days to get to Japan because 
this ocean is nearly five thousand miles wide. When we get to Japan 
we notice a strange thing. We may look back over the ocean we 
have crossed and see the sun rise! Japan is called the Land of the 
Rising Sun. The big rising sun is on all the Japanese flags. They 
float from ships in the harbor, and from tall houses in the city. 

Here come the children, down to the dock, to meet us! They 
look just like their pictures. They are all dressed alike in blue or 
gray or flowered cotton ki-mo'nos, down to their straw or wooden 
sandals. We have to turn them around to see which are boys. The 
girls tie their sashes in big butterfly bows. The boys tuck in the 


48 


THE CHILDREN OF TOPSY-TURVY LAND 


ends. And the girls do up their hair like mamas. The ki-mo'nos are 
not pinned or buttoned. They are just folded across the front. To 
keep the ki-mo'nos from flying open the children take short steps 
and walk pigeon toed. The biggest girl carries baby brother on her 
back. He is just as interested in what is going on as anybody. The 
children all smile, and bow very low. It is not polite in Japan to 
look unhappy or to say cross words. In a minute a little girl will 
rub her velvety, gold-colored cheek against yours. That is a Japanese 
kiss. She will put her arm around your waist. Then you are dear 
friends. She will want you to ride in the same jin-rik-i-sha with her. 

Jin-rik-i-shas are like big baby cabs on two wheels. They are 
pulled by men. The men wear blue or white cotton, butter-bowl hats 
on their heads, very short, tight breeches and loose shirts outside. 
In the jin-rik-i-sha you feel like twin baby sisters out with the nurse 
maid for an airing. You giggle, and your new little friend giggles. 
Then you ask her name. She says it is Cherry Blossom. That seems 
too good to be true. Her brother’s name is Nogi after a great war 
hero. 

How fast the jin-rik-i-sha man runs—as fast as a horse. He 
whirls you through the queerest streets. The houses and shops are 
of gray wood, with heavy, over-hanging roofs of black tiles. They 
are wide open. The walls are slid back so you can see everything 
that is going on inside. By and by you come to the children’s house. 
They all kick off their sandals and go in in their stocking feet. No 
wonder, with such clean white straw mats on the floor! You take 
off your shoes, too. They are so troublesome you think you will get 
some Japanese sandals to wear. 

What a funny house! It has no windows, no doors, no rooms. 
The walls slide back to make just one room, and that is open clear 
through as if it was all out doors. There are no chairs, no beds, 
no tables. The parlor is at the back of the house. That is the 
prettiest part because it looks into the prettiest little garden you 
ever saw. 

There is a little hill, and a little river with a tiny bridge across 
it. There is a little lake with gold fish, and tiny twisted old pine 
trees. There is a little tea house in the garden. You sit on your 
heels before little tables a foot high, and a little maid brings tea 
on a tray. You drink out of dolly tea cups. 

Every minute there is something new. The children stop a toy 
stove peddler and rent a real stove with a charcoal fire in it. You 



F. E. COMPTON <& CO. 


SCENES IN JAPAN 


FROM STEREOGRAPH 


H. C. WHITE CO., N. Y. 


1—Peasant and Mt. Fujiyama. 2—Flower garden. 3—Babies and big sisters. 4 — linrikisha men and cherry 

blossom time. 5—Japanese Bed. 6—Combing out flax seed. 






















THE CHILDREN OF TOPSY-TURVY LAND 


49 


can have it for an hour for five cents with rice flour dough to bake 
cakes on it. The girls bring out their dollies. The dollies look just 
like themselves. The boys fly kites. The kites are shaped like fish 
balloons, like dragons and butterflies and animals. They play some¬ 
thing like pussy wants a corner, and a card game like authors They 
call this the game of the one hundred poets. Verses are on the cards 
and you have to learn them to play well. 

At dinner the family sits in a circle on the floor. Each person 
has a little stool for a table. The maid brings food on little black 
and gold trays, one thing at a time. There are no knives or forks or 
spoons. You eat with long ivory pencils called chop-sticks—if you 
can. You drink soup from cups. Candy and sweet things are brought 
first. Then you have fish with pineapple sauce, then salad and hard 
green pears, then rice and tea. There is quite a peck of boiled rice 
in a round wooden box, with a cover to keep it hot. Rice is Japanese 
bread. You may eat all you want. If you drop your chop-sticks or 
break a cup, everybody will laugh and begin to talk about something 
else very fast. They know you feel bad about it and it wouldn’t be 
polite to notice an accident. 

At night the maid slides the walls in place around the house. 
Then she pulls out more walls, and makes as many bedrooms as are 
needed. She opens cupboards in the walls and tumbles out dozens of 
soft thick comforters onto the floor. That makes a bed. You use 
the top comforter for a cover. She gives you a wooden brick for a 
pillow. Little Cherry Blossom giggles when she sees your surprised 
look. But she rolls up a quilt to make you a pillow. Sne lies down 
beside you, tucks the block under her own neck and goes sound 
asleep in a minute. 

Before you leave Japan you must go to visit a Japanese school 
with your little friends. You find they have forty-seven letters to 
learn, instead of twenty-six. And they have thousands of word signs, 
that look like very queer, black, bird-tracks. They write with a 
paint brush. Their books begin at the back, and the reading goes up 
and down instead of across the page. They sit on mats on the floor, 
in their stocking feet. They count with wooden beads strung on 
wires in a slate frame. They have to learn English, too. They say 
English is the hardest to learn of all their lessons, because it seems 
upside down. 

If you go to Japan in the spring you will see the cherry trees 
in bloom, and the pear trees and plum trees. The Japanese grow 


50 


THE CHILDREN OF TOPSY-TURVY LAND 


fruit trees in their little toy gardens just for the blossoms. They 
have a flower festival when the trees are in bloom. Everybody writes 
little poems about the flowers on rice paper, and ties them to the 
trees. Isn’t that a pretty thing to do? People try to stay out of 
doors, in big parks, all they can, in cherry blossom time. They go 
up the mountain sides where miles of trees are in bloom. They take 
picnic lunches in little straw boxes. They carry paper parasols for 
fear it might rain; and when they come home at night they carry 
red paper lanterns to light the way. 

Sometimes Japan is called the Flowery Kingdom. It might be 
called the land of polite people, or the land of happy children. What 
would you call it? See Japan, page 960. Mutsuhito, Emperor of 
Japan, page 1292, and Oriental Art in article on Fine Arts. 


ALL WORK AND NO PLAY FOR LITTLE WUNG FOO 


51 


XV. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY FOR LITTLE WUNG FOO 

If Wung Foo had studied very hard at school, and learned as 
many as twenty-five new sign words, his grandmother told him stories 
in the evening. Wung Foo was a little Chinese boy, eight years old. 
His father was a rich silk merchant in Canton, China. His grand¬ 
mother was a little old lady. But she wore such rich clothes, her 
face was so carefully painted, and she had so many jewelled pins and 
flowers in her hair, that she looked quite young. Wung Foo was 
proud to have her lean on his shoulder when she wanted to cross 
the room. Her little crippled feet were only four inches long. 

Chinese stories for children are the scar-iest kind. They are all 
about witches and goblins and dragons. They did not scare Wung 
Foo, as long as his grandmother talked in her sweet, sing-song way. 
Besides, his mother, his aunts, his sisters, his girl cousins and his 
baby brother were there in the women’s sitting room. Wung Foo 
was a visitor. He lived on the men’s side of the house. 

Wung Foo had a chubby, yellow face and slanting black eyes, 
like Japanese Nogi. He, too, pushed a great deal of rice into his 
round mouth with chop-sticks, and drank many little cups of tea. In 
most other ways he was very, very different from Nogi. Nogi 
was always laughing, but Wung Foo was a sober little fellow. 
China isn’t nearly as pleasant a place for children to be born in as 
Japan. 

Wung Foo looked very fat in the winter time because he had to 
wear such thick, quilted cotton under-clothing. There were no little 
brass box, charcoal stoves, as in Japan, to keep the house warm. 
And there were no soft mats on the cold brick floors, so his gold 
trimmed, red cloth shoes had thick, white felt soles. He wore loose 
trousers of red silk, folded around his ankles, and a wadded blue silk 
coat fastened with gold buttons and cord loops. He kept his round 
cap on, even in the house. His head was shaven, all but a thick 
black lock on top. The barber braided some long, black silk threads 
with the hair, to make a queue (cue) like his father’s, and left a 
pretty silk tassel at the end. By and by his hair would be long. 
Then he would not need the silk. The little boy was a small copy 
of his grandfather, 

o 


52 


ALL WORK AND NO PLAY FOR LITTLE WUNG FOO 


Wung Foo’s little six year old sister was a small copy of her 
grandmother. She was dressed almost like her brother, but her silk 
trousers hung loose, like a divided skirt. She lay on cushions, on a 
bamboo sofa, with her bound feet under her. Sometimes she cried 
with pain. When grandmother told a fairy story she always said: 
“The beautiful maiden had such tiny feet that a mandarin’s son 
married her. ” Then the little girl stopped crying. By and by she 
could wear satin shoes four inches long, and have her face painted, 
and dress her hair with flowers and jewelled pins, and very likely a 
mandarin’s son would marry her. Of the hero, grandmother always 
said: “He learned all the thirty thousand sign words, worshiped at 
the tombs of his fathers, and became a rich merchant.” Wung Foo 
made up his little mind that he would be very good and study hard. 

A Chinese house is just as shut up as a Japanese house is wide 
open. Wung Foo’s home had a wall around it. It stood in a garden, 
with a lily and fish pond, a bridge, and a curly-roofed tea-house. The 
women’s sitting room was very pretty. It had stools and tables of 
carved black wood, inlaid with pearl flowers. On the walls were hung 
pictures embroidered on red satin, or painted on rice paper. There 
were vases and jars of red and gold, and blue and white. The tea 
trays were of silver with gold birds on them. The ladies opened and 
shut scented fans. They spun flax, embroidered on silk and linen and 
played dominoes. They had pet gold fish and singing birds. They 
ate a great many sweet things. When they visited other ladies they 
went in sedan chairs. Sedan chairs are cushioned and curtained and 
gilded boxes. They have four poles and are carried by men servants. 
The ladies could not see out of them, very well, or be seen. That 
was too bad, for the streets were very crowded and gay. 

When Wung Foo went to bed in the men’s room, he pulled a 
down quilt over his head. He was only a little boy, after all. In 
the dark the goblin stories scared him. In the morning he was 
awakened by a thousand noises. Watchmen told the hour on bamboo 
drums. Beggars beat on the gate with sticks until a servant went 
out with rice. Peddlars cried out that they had fish and ducks and eggs 
and fruits and fat puppies, to sell. A procession banged and rattled and 
squealed Chinese music. Wung Foo thought it was very sweet music. 
China had always had it. China never changed anything. He 
thought the old ways of doing things the very best ways in the world. 

One very old way of doing things in China is for little boys to 
go to school before breakfast, and to go nearly every day in the 


WUNG FOO’S WORK AND PLAY 



These Chinese school children are playing a Chinese game called “The Dragon Head.” 
On your right is a Chinese boy who earns his living by street exhibits of sleight of hand, 
such as spinning plates. 



The Chinese in cities buy water of these native carriers. That Chinese farmer raises 
poppies from which opium is made that is the curse of his people. See his opium pipe? 



For a fraction of a cent you can have a “street-car” like this all to yourself in China. 
It is the native Sedan chair and is quite comfortable to ride in. 




























ALL WORK AND NO PLAY FOR LITTLE WUNG FOO 


53 


year. The only vacations are at New Years, in February; on kite 
flying day in October, and on the feast of the lanterns day. Then 
fire-crackers pop and snap and bang all day long, as they 
do on our Fourth of July. When Wung Foo went to school there 
were a thousand interesting things in the crowded streets, but he 
never noticed them. He walked along gravely. When he met his 
schoolmates he shook his own hands inside his sleeves to show that 
he was glad to see them. The school was much like a Japanese school, 
except that the boys sat on stools, with higher stools in front for 
tables; and the teacher was very cross. 

At ten o’clock Wung Foo came home for breakfast. At four he 
came home for dinner. It was a very good dinner of bird’s nest 
soup, fish, duck eggs, chop-suey, rice and gam-got. When chop-suey 
is made of bits of chicken, ham, water chestnuts, mushrooms, celery 
and crisp little barley sprouts, all fried together in peanut oil and 
dressed with spicy brown sauce, it is very good indeed. Gam-got is 
little preserved oranges about as big as plums. Sometimes he had 
chrys-an-the-mum fritters, of the flower petals, with pineapple sauce. 

Once Wung Foo went on a journey with his father. He went on 
a boat up the river. The river was so wide there was room for sail 
boats in the middle, and for streets of house-boats along the banks. 
Women washed and cooked on the decks of the house-boats. Chil¬ 
dren played there with little barrels tied on their backs. If they 
fell into the water the barrels kept them afloat until some one could 
pull them into the house again. The people who lived in house boats 
were poor. Boys no older than himself tended ducks in the marshes. 
Others fished with big birds that were trained to dive. They were 
all barefooted. The little girls had big feet. They would always 
have to work. 

Wung Foo saw other little boys and girls picking cotton bolls, 
and tea leaves, and mulberry leaves to feed silk worms, and planting 
rice in wet ground. He saw them bending over cotton and silk 
looms, and carrying heavy jars and tiles at the pottery works. They 
worked for a few cents a day. They lived in huts and ate nothing 
but rice and a very little fish, and drank the poorest tea. When he went 
back home he studied harder than ever. He was glad he was going 
to be a mandarin, or at least a silk merchant like his father. Perhaps 
he might go away to be a merchant in Chinatown in San Francisco, 
America, or to Manila, in the Philippine Islands. But when he got very 
rich he would go back to China. See The Chinese Empire, page 389. 


ALL PLAY AND NO WORK FOR MANUELO 


:>! 


XVI. ALL PLAY AND NO WORK FOR MANUELO 

Manuelo was a little brown Filipino boy who played nearly all 
day long. He did not care how many Chinese boys came to his home 
in The Philippine Islands to be rich merchants. It seemed very 
foolish to him for anyone to work so hard when it wasn’t at all neces¬ 
sary. A cocoanut shell full of rice, and a banana that he could pick 
from a tree made a very good breakfast. As for clothing, he wore 
nothing except when he went to the American school. He was a 
good-tempered, polite little boy. When he went to school he wore 
white cotton trousers and a jacket, to please the American lady teacher. 

There were many things that puzzled Manuelo. He was a 
Filipino boy, but his name was Spanish. His language was a mixture 
of Spanish and his native tongue. Now the lady teacher told him 
he was an American boy. In the school he was learning to read 
English. Let us see if we can straighten out the puzzle for him. 

Four hundred years ago the Spanish people, as well as the Eng¬ 
lish and Dutch, were great sailors and conquerors. About thirty 
years after Columbus found America, another Spanish explorer 
named Ma-gel-lan, found a large group of three thousand big and 
little islands. They were away over near China. He called these 
islands The Philippines, after the Spanish King Philip. The Philip¬ 
pine Islands belonged to Spain until a few years ago. Manuelo was 
a baby when there was a sea-fight in the harbor of Manila. Manila 
is the largest city on the islands. The fight was between Spanish 
and American ships. After that The Philippines belonged to the 
United States. The Spanish soldiers went home. There was a new 
flag of red, white and blue. The military bands played gay new 
tunes. Then the lady teacher came. For the first time, little Filipino 
boys and girls were expected to go to school. You see now how 
the little brown boy became an American. There are four colors 
of Americans—red, white, black and brown. You will like to know 
the little brown American boys and girls better. 

Manuelo was small. He would never grow to be a very large 
man, but he was straight and slender and graceful. His short black 
hair was straight. His bright black eyes slanted just the least little 
bit. His lips were thin and red. He was very clean, for he swam 


From Stenograph, Copyright by H. C. White 

HOME LIFE OF FILIPINOS IN THEIR THATCHED HUTS. PRIMITIVE FILIPINO SCHOOL HOUSE. 



















ALL PLAY AND NO WORK FOR MANUELO 


55 


in the sea, or in the nearest river, every day. There are no crocodiles 
in the rivers of The Philippines, but there are sharks in the sea. 
Manuelo had to stay in shallow water near the shore. 

Our little brown cousin lived in a village of Nipa palm huts, 
under feathery palm trees. His father’s house was built of bamboo. 
It was raised from the ground on thick, bamboo posts. It was thatched 
with Nipa palm leaves. Underneath the house was a room for the 
chickens, the pigs and the water buffalo. They all made a great 
noise in the morning and woke the family up. The light woke them 
up, too. In the walls of the house, were sliding windows set with 
thin, pearly squares cut from oyster shells. 

Manuelo helped himself to all the rice he wanted from the red 
earthen cooking pot. He took a banana, an orange, a mango, a pine¬ 
apple or any fruit he liked best. When he had eaten his breakfast, 
he tumbled down a bamboo ladder to the garden. The garden was 
gay with flowers and fruit trees. A thornbush fence was around it. 

If no playmates were in sight, Manuelo knew where to look for 
them. He ran first to the Plaza. Plaza is Spanish for open square. 
The church and the priest’s house on the Plaza were as Spanish as 
those of Cuba. They were colored lemon yellow, and had roofs of 
red tiles. A few shops, and the best Nipa houses of the village were 
on the Plaza. Market was held there some days, and the village 
band played there in the evenings. In the early morning the Plaza 
was empty and quiet. Thick, dark forests were behind the village. 
The woods ran up a mountain slope. From the bare top of the 
mountain, blue smoke curled. The mountain was a volcano. Some¬ 
times the volcano made the earth tremble. 

Manuelo ran down a street of Nipa huts to the river. The women 
of the village were there washing clothes. His sister Juanita (Wa- 
nee'ta) had a bamboo basket of pineapples on her head. She was 
going to the big market in Manila to sell them. Juanita was pretty. 
She wore a red skirt, and a white lawn jacket with wide sleeves. 
She smiled at Manuelo and he slipped into the river. He swam and 
paddled and dived with forty other children for an hour. 

In another part of the river were the water buffaloes chewing 
their cuds. They looked like clumsy, long-horned cows with thick 
legs, humps on their backs and skins like pigs. They were plastered 
with mud. You would think them very ugly, indeed, but they were 
good-tempered, useful animals. They plowed the rice and hemp 
and cane fields; they drew the heavy, two-wheeled carts to market, 


56 


ALL PLAY AND NO WORK FOR MANUELO 


and they gave milk. Manuelo called his father’s water buffalo by 
a pet name. The little boy climbed up on the animal’s hump, held 
fast by her long horns and had a ride in the water. 

When Manuelo went home with his mother, he brought her a 
bamboo pail full of water from the well in the Plaza. He cleaned 
some rice for dinner. He put some grain in a wooden trough and 
beat it with bamboo, to loosen the brown hulls. Then he tossed it 
in the air to let the chaff blow away. He caught the grains in a 
basket. Sometimes, in the spring, he helped plant rice. He waded 
in the mud and water to set the plants in rows. You know rice needs 
a lot of water to grow' in. He made fish nets of split bamboo and 
hemp. 

Manuelo learned to make all sorts of things of bamboo. Perhaps 
you have a bamboo fishing pole, and you know how light and strong 
it is. It is hollow inside, and has solid joints. Bamboo is really a 
kind of grass that grows very thick and tall. Some of the canes 
are as small as a pencil; some as thick as a man’s leg. In The Philip¬ 
pine Islands bamboo grows wild, and the Filipinos use it for many 
things. Bamboo is used in building houses, carts, bridges, ladders, 
boats and for water pipes. Split into thin strips it is woven into awnings, 
baskets and hats. The tender young shoots are good to eat, as we 
eat celery. If a Filipino is very clever, and is willing to work a little, 
he can have a very good house and cart, boat and baskets for 
nothing. And it is no great misfortune if an earthquake shakes his 
house down. He can easily build another. 

Best of all, Manuelo liked a day in the forest, on the mountain 
slope, hunting bread-fruit, figs, nuts and eggs. The woods were 
thick and damp and hot and still. Ferns grew as tall as little trees. 
The palms seemed to touch the sky. The trees grew close together. 
There were big, twisted and thorny bushes. In the woods were ever 
so many curious things. There were the mounds that birds built 
to hide their eggs. There were tailor-bird nests that were bags of 
thick leaves, sewed with spider webs. The. tailor-bird used his sharp 
bill for a needle. Bats hung by their wing-hooks, and fanned them¬ 
selves. Monkeys chattered and quarrelled and ran races through 
the trees. There were orchids (or'kids), great w r ax butterflies of 
blossoms, that grew on tree trunks, and fed on the air. Other things 
were not so pleasant. There were stinging ants and insects. There 
were snakes that could squeeze little boys to death, and poison snakes. 
But it was not often that a little Filipino boy got hurt. A number 


ALL PLAY AND NO WORK FOR MANUELO 


o/ 


of boys always went together, and they all kept their bright eyes 
and their sharp ears open. 

If Manuelo’s father sold his fish for good prices, he bought a 
white cotton suit of clothes for Sunday, or a shell comb for his wife. 
Manuelo’s mother and sisters could make good clothing, for every 
day, of hemp and palm threads; and a very fine, silky gauze of pine¬ 
apple fiber. But Juanita liked the bright calicos in the Chinese and 
American shops. She sold her fruit in the market and bought gaily 
colored skirts and ribbons and slippers. 

In the evening, Manuelo’s family sat in the open door of the 
house, and on the rounds of the ladder, below. Big fireflies flitted 
in the dark garden. They could smell the flowers and fruits. The 
father played a new tune on his guitar, and Juanita danced. Some¬ 
times his father played with the village band in the Plaza. On feast 
days, there was a church procession with beautiful tall candles and 
banners. Fire crackers were snapped and rockets sent up. On dark 
nights, the sky above the volcano was often rosy with the fires far 
down in the heart of the mountain. 

In the house a light burned all night. The lamp was a cocoanut 
shell full of oil. A light might be needed at any moment. When 
an earthquake shook a house, everybody must scramble down the 
ladder in a hurry. The animals ran out from under the house. The 
chickens squawked, the pigs squealed, and the water buffalo mooed. 
The whole village of people and animals tumbled out of doors. When 
the trembling stopped they all went back to bed again. Manuelo 
turned over and over on his bed of palm leaves. He was kept awake 
so long that he thought perhaps he wouldn’t wake up in time to go 
to the American school in the morning. 

That would worry the lady teacher, but it wouldn’t worry 
Manuelo. See The Philippine Islands, page 1469. 


58 


CHILDREN OF “THE ARABIAN NIGHTS' 


XVII. CHILDREN OF “THE ARABIAN NIGHTS” 

You have taken a long journey since you sailed through the 
Golden Gate at San Francisco. Now it is time to go home. There 
is more than one way of going home from school, and a lot of things 
to see on the way. So, when you are in far away lands, there is more 
than one way of going home to America. Don’t you want to stop, 
on the way, to see some children who live in a desert? They live 
very differently <from any people that you could find anywhere else 
in the world. They have two things you like very much—no, three. 
They have sugary dates to eat, and big humpy camels and drome¬ 
daries to ride. What is the difference between a camel and a drome¬ 
dary? And they have Arabian night’s stories. 

If you want to see Mehemet and Zaidee in their tent home in 
Arabia, you must call upon them very early in the morning, or after 
the sun goes down. From noon until four or five o’clock, when the 
burning sun blazes on the yellow desert sand, there seems to be no 
one living in the big tent. The tent is quite forty feet long, because 
the father of these children is a Sheik, or Arab chief. It is covered 
with brown camel’s hair cloth, or with black and white goat skins. 

It stands on a few acres of grass, under some tall date palm 
trees, beside a spring. The spring makes a green spot in the desert. 
All around that green place are miles and miles of dry sand. The 
sand dazzles your eyes, so you think you see other green places and 
palm trees and blue water. But these are only air pictures that 
fade away. The sand is blown up by the wind in great drifts, like 
yellow snow. In the shadows of these drifts and of big rocks, camels 
and sheep and goats lie asleep. The herders and sheep dogs are 
asleep among them. 

If you should lift the door flap of the tent you would see a white 
curtain hung across the middle. This divides the big tent into two 
rooms. The men and boys are in one room, the women and little 
girls in the other. It is dark and cooler inside the tent. You must 
step softly, for everyone is asleep. They lie on colored mats and 
saddle-bag cushions. These are made of O-ri-en'tal or Eastern rugs. 
American people buy these rugs for their very best rooms, if they 
have enough money. The Arab chief buys them in the Turkish city 


% * •» V ¥* .'*«,**■•**•*. 







ARAB LIFE IN THE DESERT 


Arabs can ride at full speed on their wonderful horses and, at the same time, aim 
and fire their guns. 


Here is a group of tents in the desert that the Arab child calls “home.” Notice 
how they differ from Indian tents. 


ARAB IN THE 
DESERT 
PREPARING 
TO PRAY 


HIS LEG 
IS TIED. 
HE CANNOT 
WANDER 


When praying, Arabs first kneel, touch the ground with their foreheads, as these 
natives of India are doing, then rise with hands uplifted toward Mecca, the birthplace of 
Mahomet, their prophet. The natives of India are Buddhists. (See Buddha (bood'a.) 



























50 


CHILDREN OF “ THE ARABIAN NIGHTS” 

where he goes to sell his camels and his wool. lie has had to pay 
a good deal for them, but they will wear several life times. Besides, 
they are the only kind of beds and .seats he can carry with him. tie 
has to move about a good deal to find food and water for his animals. 
He loves the rugs for their beautiful colors and patterns. Can you 
guess why? 

Every one is asleep but Sal'adin, the master’s Arabian horse. 
Saladin stands beside his sleeping master in the tent. He is small 
and dainty. His coat is like black satin. He holds up his proud 
head on his arched neck. He stamps his little polished hoofs on 
the sand. Saladin is the family pet. He is very gentle. He skims 
over the desert like a bird, with his master on his back. Mehemet 
gave him some dates to eat before he went to sleep. Zaidee kissed 
his black nose. 

At sunset, a cool breeze blows across the desert. Everybody 
wakes up and sits on the mats outside the tent. Mother brings her 
loom to w r eave camel’s hair cloth. The herdsmen milk the camels 
and goats. A servant woman makes mocha coffee. It is the best 
coffee in the world. The children drink goat’s milk. They all eat 
crisp bread cakes like our crackers. They are made of wheat, barley 
or millet seed flour, and baked on hot stones. They eat a stew of 
goat’s flesh or mutton. For dessert they eat dates and almonds. 

Zaidee is very pretty. She would not be so very dark, but the 
hot sun has burned her as brown as a gypsy. Her hair is black and 
straight. Her soft, almond-shaped eyes are the color of brown 
velvet. She wears wide trousers and a loose gown of blue cotton. 
On her head is a blue cloth, bound into a long-tailed bonnet-cap 
with a band of goat’s hair. She has copper and silver bracelets on 
her arms and ankles, and strings of glass beads. Her brother wears 
a long white shirt with a leather girdle, and a white cotton bonnet 
bound with goat’s hair. When they walk on the sharp, hot sand, 
they both put on leather sandals. The father wears a white turban 
made of many folds of thin stuff wound around his head. He smokes 
a pipe. 

Sometimes, as the family sits in the starlight, the father or mother 
tells stories like those you read in the Arabian Nights. Perhaps, 
because of their dull lives in the dry and barren desert, the Arabs 
have made up the most wonderfully colored and fanciful stories of 
any people in the world. Their stories are full of the splendors of 
palaces and princes. They sparkle with jewels and are woven of 


GO CHILDREN OF “THE ARABIAN NIGHTS*’ 

magic. The children of every people in the world listen to these 
stories with wide, wondering eyes. Perhaps, too, that is why the 
desert people love the many-colored, gaily-patterned rugs. Spread 
on the sand they look like flower beds. 

As soon as the moon is up, the herders take down the big tent. 
The water is dwindling in the spring, the grass is almost gone. The 
family must move to a better pasture. They must go at night, when 
it is cool. Everything is packed on the kneeling camels. Skin bags 
are filled with water and bread and dates, for the journey. One by 
one the animals take a last drink at the spring. The camels fill the 
little water pockets in their stomachs, to last for several days. 

Saladin, the proud bearer of his long-bearded, white-turbaned 
master, leads the procession. Then come the women and children 
on the riding dromedaries. The freight camels follow with their 
drivers; the brown herders and dogs drive the sheep and goats. The 
moon is a silver crescent in the dark blue sky. The stars are little 
high, white lamps. The padded feet of the camels make no sound. 
Camels are called ships of the desert. They swing and rock like 
ships across the sea of sand. 

The procession grows smaller and dimmer in the distance. Now 
it goes over a great ridge of drifted sand and disappears. Mehemet 
and Zaidee are gone. But you will never forget this vast plain of 
white sand under the dark blue sky. It lies there so wide and 
silent and lonely, under the silver light of the moon and stars. See 
Camel , Arabia , Arabian Stories in article on Literature, “ What is a 
Mirage?" in Wonder Items, and “The Ship of the Desert" in Wild 
Animals. 






PAINTED BY THOMAS MORAN, A. N. A. 


THE HARBOR OF VENICE 

“Soon you come to a third city where water streets are lined with palaces.” Mr. Moran’s famous sea scapes have 

earned him the title of the “American Turner.” 









THE LITTLE COUNTRY OF THE BIG MOUNTAIN 


61 


XVIII. THE LITTLE COUNTRY OF THE BIG MOUNTAIN 

After you have watched the ships of the desert sail away across 
the sea of sand, with Mehemet and Zaidee, you go down to a seaport 
town and get on a real ship. It steams for hours between yellow 
deserts. Then, all at once, it comes out through a canal, into the 
warmest, bluest big sea, dotted with the greenest islands and bordered 
by the greenest shores. The ship stops at many cities, everyone 
of them different, with different kinds of people. 

In Athens the people are Greeks. Long, long ago the Greeks 
built the marble temple whose broken columns you may see on the 
hill. They wrote poetry and made up stories that we read today. 
They made marble statues so much more beautiful than any people 
have made since that we put plaster copies of them in our houses. 

The Turkish city of Con-stan-ti-no-ple seems to be all round 
domes and tiny spires. In the shops there, you could buy the beauti¬ 
ful rugs the Arab chief had in his tent. Soon you come to a third 
city, where water streets are lined with palaces. That is Venice, 
in Italy. The dark, handsome young men in knee breeches, wide 
hats and red sashes, who stand up to row the swan-like boats, are 
Italians. The boats are called gon'do-las. As the Greek people of 
the old days made temples and statues and poetry, so the Italians 
built beautiful churches and palaces, and painted wonderful pictures 
and wrote more poetry. 

You will not have time to stop in these places. Besides you 
will see all these people again, and all together, in the strangest 
place where you would never think of looking for them. There is 
just one place more where you really must stop awhile. It is so high 
up in the air that it’would be nicer to go in a flying machine, although 
you could go in a railroad train from Venice. You can “play like” 
you are going in a flying machine. It’s the easiest thing in the world 
to “play like” isn’t it? 

The finest place to start from is the open square in front of 
a fairy-tale palace, and the fairy-tale church of St. Mark’s in Venice. 
They are all white marble arches and gold, and carved angels and 
flowers, and lovely spires that go away up to the clouds. Thousands 
of pigeons flutter about there, and nest in the hearts of the marble 


62 


THE LITTLE COUNTRY OF THE BIG MOUNTAIN 


flowers, and between the wings of the angels. They will fly a little 
way up with you in the gold sunshine. But very soon you leave 
them below you. Then the spires are below, and even the blue sea 
drops away out of sight. 

Do you know how high you are? Nearly three miles. The 
air is very thin and pure and clear. Away off to the north you can 
see piled up clouds, all pink and pearl and violet and gold—and 
diamonds! See how they flash all the colors of the rainbow in the 
sun! Why, it’s ice and snow—mountains of them away up in the 
sky! The mountains are called the Alps. And you are above them, 
looking down. What do you see? 

Jagged peaks of rocks and ice are crowded and tumbled together; 
steep slopes and broad fields of snow lie below them. High between 
the slopes are hundreds of streams and cascades of glittering ice. 
Those are the frozen rivers called glaciers. Below them, growing 
on snowy slopes, are forests of dark pine trees. Farther down are 
green valleys where cattle feed, and in the deepest pockets of the 
mountains are blue lakes like mirrors. Surely no one can live in a 
country that stands on end like the Alps! Oh, yes they can. This 
mountain country is Switzerland. It is only two hundred miles 
long and one hundred fifty wide. Two thirds of it is mountains. 
Some of the peaks are nearly three miles high. But more than three 
million of the busiest people in the world live in Switzerland. A 
third of them are farmers, too. 

Now you know they must use every scrap of good earth that 
is as big as a table cloth. On every shelf of rock a stout little house, 
of stone and pine timbers, nestles. On every wide shelf there is a 
whole village, with a school house and a church. In the valleys 
are big cities. On every lake shore are hotels for travellers who 
come from all over the world just to look at this beautiful land. 
Nearly every one of these travellers ask their Swiss guides how all 
those towns and farm-houses came to be scattered over the moun¬ 
tains. And they ask why the Swiss people have no language of their 
own but speak German, French or Italian, and sometimes all three, 
as well as English. This is the story the guides tell. 

“Once there was a very lazy goblin. He came from the Rhine 
River, in Germany. He wanted a city, but was too lazy to build one. 
So he picked up a lot of houses and put them in a bag. Then he 
went across the river into France and stole some more houses. In 
Italy he stole palaces and churches. He put all these in his bag 




v v 



Copyright by Underwood and Underwood 

SWISS MOTHER AND CHILDREN. 


With village in which they live, and in the background the Alps mountain range, showing glacier 

and eternal snows. 








THE LITTLE COUNTRY OF THE BIG MOUNTAIN 


63 


and started over the Alps with them. There was a big hole in the 
bag, so every once in a while a house dropped out, until he lost every¬ 
thing he had stolen. Every house stopped where it was dropped 
because it couldn’t get down again. The funny thing about it was 
that there were-people in those houses, and they staid, too, because 
they liked the country. They couldn’t agree on a King, so they 
agreed to do without one; and every man kept his own language 
and learned the others. By and by, so many English and American 
travellers visited the country, that the Swiss people learned English, 
too.” The Swiss people always tell this story to their children. 

The first time her big brother Victor told her the Lazy Goblin 
story, little Marie Louise laughed. She loved her mountain home. 
From the air-ship you can see it down there on its shelf of rock. A 
stone wall with a grove of pine trees is behind and above it, to keep 
the mountain snow from falling on it. The roof slopes so far out 
beyond the walls, to let the snow slide off, that you cannot see its 
many little windows filled with blooming plants. But you can see 
Marie Louise outside, in her bright blue skirt, white blouse, and black 
velveteen waist laced tight to her plump little body. 

Marie Louise feeds the chickens and waters the potato patch. 
She sits among the flower beds with her knitting and watches the 
honey bees filling the hives. She has bread and butter and honey, 
wild strawberries, goat’s milk and cream cheese for her dinner. She 
eats from a wooden bowl that her father made. Victor carved a 
wild strawberry vine around it. Victor made her a spoon from the 
horn of a chamois (sham-my). A chamois is a very fleet little moun¬ 
tain antelope. Her winter coat is lined with warm chamois skin. On 
her spoon handle is carved a bunch of edelweiss. Edelweiss is a 
tiny white flower that grows high up on the banks of the frozen 
rivers. This is how Victor got a bunch for a pattern. 

He guided some travellers across the glaciers, and away up 
among the icy peaks. He took his iron-tipped staff, or alpenstock, 
to keep from slipping, and tied the travellers to loops in a long rope, 
one behind the other. When he brought them all down safely they 
gave him money. He showed Marie Louise how high, and in what 
dangerous places he had been, by the bunch of edelweiss in his hat. 

In the summer Victor is a guide. The father goes up the moun¬ 
tain with the cows, to where there is sweet grass. There he lives 
in a little dairy house and makes butte-r and cheese. In the winter 
time they are all together in the house. There is a big porcelain 


64 


THE LITTLE COUNTRY OF THE BIG MOUNTAIN 


stove, as white and shining as a bath tub, to keep the house warm. 
The mother knits and makes embroidery to sell. The men carve 
wood to sell to travellers the next summer. They make bowls and 
cups and boxes and napkin rings, and clock cases carved with edel¬ 
weiss and alpine roses and chamois heads, and with spires like the 
peaks of the Alps. 

The children go to school in the village below. It is a mile 
away, but they get there in about two minutes. They slide down, 
on sleds. That is fun. But, oh dear, they have to climb back, after 
school! Once, when it was snowing hard, Marie Louise and some 
little playmates lost their way, and they got so cold and tired they 
fell down and went to sleep in the snow. Who do you think found 
them and brought their fathers to carry them home? 

Big, white and tan, Saint Bernard dogs! The dogs live with 
some good, religious Brothers away up on the mountains, and they 
go out to find lost people. The dogs were so glad to find the children 
that they barked and called everybody for a mile around. They 
stood there by the snow-covered children until men came. The Swiss 
children love the big dogs. 

Victor held Marie Louise on his lap that night, as if he would 
never let his little sister go, again. While she snuggled there, he 
finished a clock case. In it he made a tiny room with a spring-door. 
When it is time for the clock to strike, this door flies open in the 
most surprising way, and a little bird hops out and says: 

‘ ‘ Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! ’ ’ 

Dear, dear, so late as that? It’s time you were hurrying home 
to America. See Red Sea, Suez Canal, Mediterranean Sea, Greece, 
Athens, Turkey, Constantinople, Italy, Venice, Byzantine Art, Greek 
Art, Italian Art, in article on Fine Arts, Greek and Roman Literature, 
in article on Literature, Switzerland, Alps Mountains. 


THE “FRONT DOOR” OF AMERICA 


05 


XIX. THE “FRONT DOOR” OF AMERICA 

The very nicest time to get home to America is on a summer 
morning. You have been on the water nearly a week. You have 
crossed the same Atlantic ocean, that the white children and the 
black child crossed, so long ago, to find new homes. As you lie half 
awake in the bed that is built in the wall of your tiny cabin, some 
one on deck cries “Land!” 

You jump out of bed, scramble into your clothes, and run to 
the upper deck. All the first cabin passengers are there, leaning on 
the rail. Far off you see, low down on the water, what looks like a 
bank of blue cloud. Some are looking at it through opera glasses. 
The sun strikes across the water. The thin morning fog flies away. 
Now you see green grass and trees, on the cloud bank. On the other 
side of a narrow strip of water is a long, sandy point with a light¬ 
house on it. A cheer goes up. Handkerchiefs are waved. Every¬ 
body is glad to get home. Slowly the big steamer moves through 
the narrow strait. All at once you are in the wide harbor of New 
York. This is The front door of America. Near the entrance to the 
harbor, on an island park, is a great statue of Liberty, holding a 
torch in the air. 

What a different scene this is from what the Dutch children found 
here, three hundred years ago. Then this harbor was a wilderness of 
wooded shores, with only a few Indian canoes on the waters. Now, the 
long narrow island in the mouth of the Hudson river, and the shores 
around the harbor, are covered with high buildings, as far as you 
can see. The waters are arched with bridges, and crowded with ships. 

If all this looks strange to you, think what it must look like 
to poor foreign people who came to America to find new homes. 
New ones come almost every day. You didn’t know there were 
thousands of them on your ship, did you? A great ocean steamer 
is five or six stories deep, you remember. You have lived in the top 
story, or first cabin. You have never seen the people below you. 
You can see them now, as they go ashore over the gang plank, if 
you stand by the deck rail and look down. 

A crowd of the strangest looking people pour over the gang 
plank from the third deck, or steerage. They look like little bits 


66 the “front door” of America 

of all the countries you have seen or read about. Few of the women 
wear hats. They have handkerchiefs or caps or shawls on their 
heads. They carry babies in their arms, on their hips or their backs. 
Little children cling to their short, wide skirts. The men and boys 
carry mountains of queer shaped bundles and boxes and bags, on 
their heads and shoulders. They stand by these bundles on the 
dock, as if they feared to lose them. Men in uniform keep the 
crowds moving. They shout orders in a dozen languages. The 
people are weary from the long journey, but oh, so interested 
in everything, so eager and hopeful. They wait patiently with 
their babies and their bundles, and do everything they are told 
to do. 

They will not be allowed to leave this dock, as do the cabin 
passengers. Although they are on American soil they have not 
been admitted to make their homes here, yet. In the old days, every 
one could come in freely. They cannot do that now. We found 
that a great many very old people, and orphan children, and blind 
and crippled and feeble-minded people, came. They did not belong 
here, but we had to take care of them. Many bad men came, too. 
They had been in prison in their own land, and they gave us much 
trouble. So laws were passed to admit only those who were strong 
and well, and good honest workers. Every one who comes must 
have some money to give him a start. Children and old people must 
have some one to care for them. 

All these people must get on a barge, or open boat, and go back 
to the emigrant station on Ellis Island. Ellis Island is just inside 
the harbor. You can buy a ticket and go there to see these people 
examined and questioned by government officers. Your boat is 
fast so it passes the barge. 

When you leave your boat, hurry across the open space to a 
big building like a railway station. Go up a side stairway to a gallery 
that runs around a big, white-tiled room and look down. Up the 
wide, central stairway come the people from the barge. There are 
thousands of them. See if there are any you know. 

Oh, there are the Dutch children. They wear wooden shoes 
just as they did three hundred years ago. That is an Irish family. 
The children have merry eyes. That is a German family. The 
children are stout and fair and rosy. You wonder if “dear mother” 
has a Christmas tree in that beautiful linen chest she sits on. There 
are some English or Scotch people. The little girls are shy, the boys 





GATE OF OUR PROMISED LAND 


HERE IS THE GREAT BARTEIOLDI STATUE AT THE ENTRANCE TO 
NEW YORK HARBOR AT SIGHT OF WHICH THE IMMIGRANT AND THE 
AMERICAN RETURNING FROM FOREIGN SHORES, SHED TEARS OF JOY. 


A newly arrived German immigrant with his eight children and their “liebe mutter. 


asiiEr* 


Here is the immigrant station on Ellis Island where all foreigners are examined to see 
if there is any objection to their entering the United States. 



























THE “FRONT DOOR” OF AMERICA 67 

independent little fellows. And there are such a lot of people who 
never came to America at all, in the old days. 

Those big, black-bearded men in long overcoats, caps and high 
boots are Russian farmers. They will go out to wide western plains 
to grow wheat. We need that kind of Americans. The smaller, 
long-bearded men who are near them, are Russian Jews. They 
have had trouble about their religion, and come to us for peace and 
safety. They will work in tailor shops in the big cities. Some will 
be peddlers. By and by they will have good shops of their own. 

Those men in velveteen jackets with nickel buttons and bright 
red vests, are Hungarians in their Sunday clothes. Some are in 
sheepskin coats. Their women have short skirts, bare heads and 
embroidered aprons. These people will work in mines and packing 
houses and steel foundries. There are no women with those red- 
capped Turks who have come to sell us Or-ien-tal rugs. Those hand¬ 
some Greeks will be peddlers of fruit or of plaster casts of old Greek 
statues. The Italians, with dark, rosy faces, have dozens of little 
ones with them. The men are small, but they can do the hardest 
kind of labor on railroad beds and street sewers. The Norwegians 
are tall. In their old home they aie sailors. They will not be afraid 
to do iron work on sky-scrapers and bridges. Those fair, very clean 
young women are Swedes. With the German and Irish girls they 
make the best housemaids in the world. There are very few people 
among these new-comers who cannot do some useful work. 

Men in uniform are at every door and stair landing. They can 
speak many languages and they know what country every one comes 
from by his dress and face. They are kind to these strangers. Now, 
one says to a scared little Italian woman, in her own language: 

“Sig-nor-a (madam), come in out of the draft. The bam-bin-o 
(baby) will catch cold.” She smiles happily to hear her own dear 
tongue in this strange America. So it goes, all along the line. Five 
thousand strangers are made to feel at home. 

On one stair landing stands a gov-ern-ment doctor in uniform. 
He looks closely at every man, woman and child. Now he pulls a 
man out of line and marks a cross on his sleeve with chalk. The 
doctor thinks this man has tu-ber'cu-lo'sis. That is a “catching” 
disease, and few people get well of it. He must go to a special room 
and be examined. Another doctor looks at people’s eyes. Another 
looks at their faces to see if they are bright enough to earn a 
living. People who are a little sick from the journey are sent to a 


68 THE “FRONT DOOR” OF AMERICA 

hospital, right on the Island, and made well. Children with measles 
or other “catching” disease that they can be cured of, are sent to 
city hospitals. 

Inspectors look at the numbered tag pinned to each emigrant’s 
coat, and tell him which wire-screened room to go to. There he 
finds an officer who speaks his language. The officer has a long paper' 
that tells all about him. It was filled out in the seaport town from 
which he sailed. Now he must answer all these questions again. 
What is his name, his age, his birthplace? What useful work can 
he do? How much money did he bring with him? Has he friends 
in America? Where does he want to go? Has he ever been in prison; 
or in an asylum; or dependent on charity? What is his health? If 
his answers are satisfactory and truthful he pays a fee of $4.00. 
This is to pay the expenses of the emigrant station. 

Then, if he is going farther than New York, an officer goes with 
him to the ticket office. He buys his ticket and checks his baggage. 
He finds that, in America, people do not drag heavy bundles about 
with them, but have them carried safely in trains, for nothing. Then 
he is put onto a barge with other people going his way, and taken 
to his railway station. There, another agent puts him on the right 
train. He is not allowed to go wrong. No one can cheat him or 
get his money away from him. Many have to wait until friends claim 
them, or until the sick members of the family come from a hospital. 
Such people have a big, steam-heated room to sit in. They have good 
food at low cost. They have white iron and canvas beds to sleep in. 

Every one who is admitted to America leaves the emigrant 
station through a certain swing door. A smiling man in uniform 
stands there, looks at the admission ticket and points the way. 
On the door is a sign that reads: 

‘Push: to New York.” 

That is the front door to America. 

Once the new-comer is through that door he can go anywhere 
he likes, in our broad land, to live and work. Some days five thousand 
emigrants go through that door, and every year a million or more. 
In a few years they learn to speak English, and all other American 
ways. Their children go to our schools. They all change into Amer¬ 
icans so quickly you think there must be some magic in the words 
on the front door: 

“Push: to New York.” See New York City, Russia, Hungary, 
Sweden and Norway. 









COPYRIGHT 1912, F. E. COMPTON * CO. 




AIR AND LAND TRANSPORTATION 


1 —Dirigible Balloon. 2—Aeroplane. 3—Eskimo Dog Team. 4—Prairie Schooner. 5—Russian Troika 
6 —Reindeer Sledge. 7—Camel: Ship of the Desert. 8—First Railway Train in England, 1825. 

9—Modern Railway Train. 10—Automobile. 




















MODES OF TRAVEL IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES 


COPYRIGHT 1912, F. E. COMPTON A CO. 


11—Jinrickisha, Japan. 12—Llamas of Peru. 13—Palanquin, China. 14—Tagalog Tandem, Philippines. 15- 
J Coach. 16—Sicilian Cart. 17—Spanish Milkman. 18—Cart with Bamboo Cover, Borneo 

19—Elephant with Howdah, (canopied seat) Siam. 


-English 



























WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE ON 


Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher. —When the writer was a 
child, Physical Geography was a high school study. A hard name often 
makes a simple thing difficult. Physical Geography is only land, water 
and air, and their effects upon each other. It is Home Geography to 
every child, no matter where he lives, and within his every day expe¬ 
rience. Before he goes to school at all, he has made sand houses and 
mud pies. He has paddled in ponds, picked up pebbles and shells, slid 
on the ice, thrown snow balls, and sent up toy balloons and sailed boats 
and kites. Just by using his little hands and feet and eyes, in play, 
he has learned more about Physical Geography than most grown people 
realize, and he has put his knowledge to good use. The wisest teaching 
of today builds upon the knowledge and interests already possessed. It 
follows nature’s plan, too, of continuing to use the objects nearest at hand. 

Home Geography, then, is the very first and most fundamental of 
all nature studies. Loam, sand, gravel, clay, boulders, quarry stone, coal 
and mineral rocks, can be brought into the house and school room. Out 
of these, with intelligent direction, little children can build up a miniature 
world that they can understand. With every natural child knowledge is 
power. He wants to use what he knows, to “make things.” On a 
common kitchen table, with an upright strip nailed about the edges, he 
can make a landscape. A child who piles up a tiny hill, levels a field, 
scoops out a bowl and a trough, and fills them with water himself, can 
make his own definitions. From these clear mental images, he can be 
led to imagine the big round world of mountains, plains, rivers, lakes and 
oceans. 

It is very wonderful how quickly a child catches an idea. In his 
play, he reproduces big things on a small scale. He can make a satisfac¬ 
tory rain with a watering pot, so he will understand the vapor cloud made 
by a boiling tea-kettle. Most, if not all, of the properties of earth, air 
and water, can be made plain to a child by just such simple means always 
near at hand. Air is really no more difficult than the other two. The 
child already knows temperature, and wind, or air in motion. The little 
hot-air balloon and the flying bird are among his earliest objects of wonder. 
The fact that air cannot be seen or felt, only adds to its interest to a 
child who believes in fairies. 

As you read these nature studies in Home Geography, and try the 
experiments suggested, in doors and out, with the children, watch their 
.minds expand, with new and interesting ideas, and open like flowers. The 
most important part of education is to get a child to see things accurately, 
and with such keen interest that he bubbles over to express himself in 
word, form or line. 


WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE ON 

I. LAND 

When you went around the world you found that this earth 
we live upon is made of just land and water. But what a number 
of things were made with them. No two countries looked just the 
same, but they were all beautiful and interesting. Do you want 
to know how they came to be so different? 

You need not go around the world again to find out, but it will 
help you to understand everything better if you will remember what 
you saw—the grassy plains, the high, rocky mountains, the green 
river valleys, the sandy desert. No matter where you live on the 
earth, there is land and water. In any wood or field or city park 
you can find out a great many of old mother earth’s secrets. 

This is a perfectly flat meadow, isn’t it? It is covered with 
grass and flowers. Here is a pond, with water-flags and cat-tails 
and pussy willows growing about it. The water is as still as if it 
lay in a wash basin. No, there is a ripple on the other side. A little 
stream, almost buried in grass, is flowing in there. The water runs 
very slowly. The land on that side slopes a little toward the pond, 
or the tiny stream could not flow into it. Water never runs any 
way except down hill. Here is another little feeder to the pond, 
and another! Here the water runs out of the pond, through a larger 
brook. The meadow isn’t flat at all. It is made up of little slopes. 
The pond is a small lake. Some lakes are hundreds of miles long, 
but they were formed just like this pond. The water from them 
flows out through a big river, instead of through a little brook. They 
are fed by many small rivers, and by springs underneath, too. 

Wherever a pond or a lake is made on land, there must be a 
low place shaped like a bowl, with the land sloping down on ail the 
sides but one. But sometimes, for hundreds of miles, the land slopes 
from only two sides, making a trough between. There you would 
find, not a lake, but a river. When the river is very long and deep, 
like the Mississippi, its valley is hundreds of miles wide. The slopes 
rise slowly, but they rise high, to the very tops of mountain ranges. 
Many big streams run down these long slopes to feed the main river, 

70 




THE STORY TOLD IN THE ROCKS 



The story of the earth is long. 
It is found recorded in the rocks. 
These pictures tell a part of it. 
You see a stream which ages ago 
flowed down through the moun¬ 
tains to the sea. Its rushing 
current carried sand, gravel and 
stones which fell to the bottom 
of the sea and covered up shells, 
bones of fish, etc., which lay on 
the bottom. 



Later great monsters lived in 
the sea; some of these are shown 
here. The large one lifting its 
head above the water had a long 
name which means “fish lizard.” 
As time passed the stream grew 
broader and washed down more 
stones and soil which fell into the 
sea, covering the sea weeds, 
shells, bones of dead fish, etc. 



The great fish lizard was killed 
in a fight with other monsters, 
and its body fell to the bottom. 
Trees now grew on the land and 
dead trunks and branches fell 
into the sea, became water- 
soaked and dropped to the bot¬ 
tom. All these were covered up 
by material which was carried 
down by the stream, now become 
a great river. 






















CHANGES IN Tti£ EARTH THROUGH LONG AGES 



At length great animals ap¬ 
peared on the land. One of these 
died on the river’s edge; its body 
was caught in the swollen current 
and carried to the sea bottom. 
Here it was soon buried under 
the shower of soil and gravel 
which the river kept pouring into 
the sea. Each layer of this 
material, sand, gravel and re¬ 
mains of animals spread on the 
sea bottom hardened into rock 
under pressure from above. 



After long ages men began to 
live on the earth. They lived in 
a very crude way. They had 
clumsy boats made from hollow 
tree trunks, bows and arrows and 
stone hatchets. One day a man 
dropped his stone hatchet from 
his boat and it fell to the sea 
bottom and was buried in the 
mud. 



The ocean bed was thus built 
up toward the surface, and 
finally became dry land. Men 
dug deep into the earth, and in 
the rocks found marks of these 
buried objects; the stone hatchet, 
the animal and vegetable remains, 
shells, bones of fishes, etc., in 
descending layers of rock, and 
thus read the story as we have 
it here. 

























LAND 


and little streams feed the feeders. If you made a map of the Mis¬ 
sissippi river and all it feeders, it would look like an oak tree with 
no leaves on it. 

Don’t you want to follow a brook that flows into a river, and 
find out where it came from? It’s a long walk, and up hill all the 
way. Make up a bouquet of flowers as you go. If you had a boat 
you could get some water lilies here, or with rubber boots for wading, 
some purple water flags. There are some pussy willows. How thick 
and green things grow, on the low river bank. And how soft and 
black the soil is. Where it is a little higher and dryer, you can pick 
ferns and buttercups. Higher still, in the maple woods along the 
brook, you may find violets. On that high, gravelly bank are tall, 
weedy looking plants. In the fall, if you come here again, you will 
find golden-rod and purple asters. The brook is getting narrower 
and shallower, but it runs faster. There it is almost hidden by hazel 
brush. See that squirrel? He knows there will be nuts here, and 
acorns in that oak tree he is running up. The brook is only a thread 
of water, now, but running very fast between banks of scanty grass. 
There is some ground pine and pink laurel, and dry gray lichens on 
the rocks, among scattered pine trees. 

Why there is a bunch of ferns and a cushion of velvet moss! 
Part the ferns with your fingers, and find sparkling water gushing 
out of a little nest of wet rocks. This is a spring. It is the birth 
place of the brook. These are the only ferns you found up so high. 
Ferns love water and soft soil. The spring gives them the food 
they want. 

It seems perfectly flat here. You can look over a high, wide 
country. Here is another spring. But the brook it makes flows 
the other way! Then, of course, 
the land must slope the other 
way, too. We are on a ridge 
of land, or divide. Sometimes 
a divide is called a watershed. 

It is like the roof of a house. 

The water flows down each side 
of a roof to the water troughs 
under the eaves. The rain 
washes the roof clean, doesn’t 
it? Well, the little streams wash the land slopes clean. First, they 
soften the ground they flow over and make mud. The mud mixes 




Pieces of rock broken from a cliff by rains, 
frost, etc., and dropped into a river. 


72 


LAND 



Stones from same cliff after they have 
been worn and rounded by rolling about 
in the current of the river. 


with the water and goes along with it. Stones are loosened and 
rolled along, too. Fill a big gold-fish bowl with this muddy water 
at the mouth of the brook, and let it stand awhile to settle. 

Through the glass you see clear water at the top, then mud, 
then sand, then gravel. The gravel falls the lowest because it is 

the heaviest. The little brooks 
rob the hill sides of the soil that 
plants need, as well as of the water. 
They melt and break up this soil 
as fine as they can. They even 
take some sharp corners from the 
pebbles by rolling them over and 
over in the water. Running 
water is a busy miller. It grinds earth to mud, and rocks to 
sand. Then, when it gets down to low ground, where it flows 
more slowly, it drops all this heavy matter along the river 

banks, in the river bed, and far out into the ocean. The gravel 

drops first, then the sand, then the mud. If you dig a well in 
the valley you will find a layer of loam on top, then sand, then 

gravel, on a bed of stiff clay or rock. If you scoop out a river 

bed you find things in the same order. In the ocean you find 
the gravel near the shore. It hurts your bare feet when you 
go in bathing. The sand is farther out, and the mud farthest 
of all. The water sorts all this earthy matter and puts each kind 
by itself. Isn’t that wonderful? The top layer of loam is a mixture 
of clay and sand and 
leaf mold. Leaf mold is 
added every season by 
falling leaves and decay¬ 
ing seeds and roots. It 
makes the soil softer and 
richer. 

This water miller has 
several stout helpers in 
wearing down land. One 
is wind. Wind picks up 



A heap of sand consisting of particles worn from the 
stones and gravel in the river bed. 


dust and scatters it. Then it is more easily washed into the streams 
by rain. Frost is a regular little wedge and hammer. When water 
freezes in a crack in a rock it swells, or expands, and splits the 
rock into pieces. The roots of all plants and trees split the soil, too. 




















mmm 


That “hairy elephant” is a mastodon. His bones were found in New York. He meas¬ 
ured 14 ft. 11 in. from the base of tusks to tail. The artist is modeling the Naosaurus or 
fin-backed lizard, whose skeleton was found in Texas. The Naosaurus was 9 ft. long and 
5 ft. high. 




4 


Skull of an Ey- 
rops, chief prey of 
the Naosaurus. 


'-mat 






















LAND 


73 


Burrowing animals like muskrats, foxes and snakes make little caves 
that often fall in. Earth worms and beetles honeycomb the ground 
w T ith tiny tunnels. Finally men loosen the soil by plowing and 
building. All these things make it easier for the little water miller 
to wash down the good top soil. 

On high mountains, nothing but bare rocks are left behind, and 
rain, wdnd and frost w r ork all the time to wear them down. The 
water scours the river beds deeper, and carries as much earth as it 
can out into the ocean. What becomes of the good soil that is 
washed into the ocean? It has been ground to powder or melted 
to paste. 

Water is very heavy. A little boy or girl cannot carry a wooden 
pail full of it very far. Every pint of water weighs a pound. The 
ocean is deep. There are hills and valleys 
and mountain ranges on the ocean floor, 
just as there are on land. Some places 
are as deep as our mountains are high. 

Tons and tons of water lie over every 
foot of the ocean floor, and press it smooth 
and hard. The under layers turn to stone. 

All the earthy material was sorted, so 
now it turns to many kinds of stone— 
sandstone, shale rock and slate. Far out, 
in the deepest part of the ocean, where 
sand and mud are never carried, the ocean 
bed is made of fish bones and shells. These are ground to white 
powder, by the weight of the water, and turned into chalk or 
limestone or white marble. 

You know what a volcano is, don’t you? It is a mountain with 
a fire in it. That fire comes from the middle of the earth. It lies 
far under all the land and sea. Sometimes this fire breaks through 
a mountain top, and it breaks through the floor of the ocean, too. 
When it does this sandstone is melted, and when it hardens again 
it becomes granite or lava rock. 

There are quarries of all these stones and marbles on the land. 
If they were made in the bottom of the sea how did they get up 
on the land? They were pushed up by the fire. The fire melted 
and cracked and pushed, until the rocky floor of the ocean came up 
through the water to form rocky islands. A long string of these 
islands slowly became a mountain chain. In pushing up, the rock 



A piece of rock showing the 
remains of little sea animals 
which are contained in the rock. 


74 


LAND 



A glass of water 
taken from the 
muddy river, to show 
how the fine particles 
worn from the stones, 
settle down on the 
bottom as a layer cf 
mud. 


layers were broken and folded in many curious ways. In valleys 
the rock layers rose more evenly. Just as soon as a point of rock 

rose above the water, rain and wind and frost 
and, after awhile, plants and animals began to 
wear it down. Slowly the valleys between the 
mountains were raised and filled with finely 
ground rock, waste and leaf mold. The water 
from above gathered into lake bowls and river 
troughs. 

You see the story of land goes around a 
circle. Mother earth is all the time tearing down 
and building up. She doesn’t mind spending 
millions of years in grinding a mountain into 
mud and sand; pressing these into stone, and 
lifting the rock layers into mountain chains again. While she is 
about it, too, she puts gold, silver and copper, iron, lead and tin, 
salt, sulphur and coal, and many other things, into all the cracks 
and holes, and between the layers of stone. She hides diamonds 
and many precious jewels, too. It would take too long to tell 
here how she does all these things. It took men thousands and 
thousands of years to find the keys to unlock the prisons of all 
these useful and beautiful things. 

You really ought to know about coal. It was made by pressure 
under sea water, like stones. But what do you think it was made 
of? What do you look for to make a 

fire? Wood! Rocks may melt, but they v* 

harden again. Only plants will burn j 

to ashes. 

Ages and ages ago, simple plants 
like moss, with woody stems and no 
leaves, grew on big, quiet ponds until 
they covered the water. The moss died 
below, but did not decay, and it went 
on growing on top, until a spongy, 
floating mat many feet thick was 
formed. There are many such beds of 
moss today. They make a spongy brown fuel called peat. Peat 
is burned in Ireland and other countries. Peat would become coal, 
after a long time, if it sank below the sea, mud and sand or shells 
settled on it, and the sea water pressed it between layers of rock. 





. a 


This picture shows a vein or 
bed of coal as it lies in the earth, 
with layers of different kinds of 
rock above and below it. 






















PAINTED BY THOMAS MORAN, A. N. A. 


THE SENTINEL 

“ The Sentinel ” is one of the wonderful things that Alice saw. Two of Mr. Moran’s paintings were purchased 

by Congress for the Capitol. 












LAND 


75 


Every part of this earth story is going on today. Volcanoes 
still burn, earthquakes still lift and crack and fold the rocky floor 
of the ocean. You remember the terrible earthquakes we have 
had. They shook down great cities. The earth under them was 
lifted a little, or 
dropped a little. One 
volcano poured out 
melted rock, or lava 
and granite, and buried 
a city. Some seacoasts 
are slowly sinking, 
some rising. Small 
islands come up or dis¬ 
appear. The valleys 
are being filled up, the 
mountains worn down 
by water, wind, frost, 

men animals and anc * use( ^ for fuel; also small stacks of peat piled up 
’ to dry. 

plants. Tons and tons 

of mud and sand are being carried out to the ocean every day, to 
be turned into stone again. Sea animals are dying, and dropping 
their bones and shells to the ocean floor. 

Isn’t it a wonderful story? Don’t all these things mean a great 
deal more to you than they did before? See Geology. 



A bed of peat, showing where it has been cut out 



This picture shows a volcano in action. The hollow top is the crater from which rocks 
and lava have been thrown out, and a stream of lava is flowing down the side. 




















76 


WATER 


II. WATER 

The other thing this round world is made of is water. In going 
around the earth you crossed oceans, lakes and rivers. You saw 
ice or frozen water. You saw water broken up into rain drops, frozen 
into hailstones or snow. But there was a great deal of water every¬ 
where that you did not see at all, or if you saw it you didn’t know 
it was water. 

The story of water is just as interesting and wonderful as the 
story of land. Where shall we begin to find out about it? Let us 
begin with one day when you were a small boy playing out of doors. 
Mama called you. 

“Run in, Johnny, it’s going to rain!” 

“Why is it going to rain?” you asked. Bright little boys and 
girls are big question marks, running around on two stout legs. 
They want to know the “why” of everything. - Nearly all of their 
“whys” are very sensible, too, and ought to be answered. 

See that dark cloud rolling up the sky. That cloud is as wet 
as a soaked sponge. The wind is blowing it up. The wind is colder 
than the air was a few moments ago. Now the little drops come 
pattering down. They are as round as shot from whirling so far 
down from the sky. The sun is out again. The rain has stopped. 
The dark cloud is gone. Where did it go? It fell to the earth in 
rain drops. But how did the rain cloud get up in the sky? What 
is a cloud? 

You can make a very small cloud if it is a cold day. Go to 
the door and breathe into the frosty air. You can see your breath, 
can’t you? Not all of it, just the water in your breath. The water 
is broken up into very fine mist, or vapor. Vapor is a kind of 
water dust. The air soaks up vapor as a sponge soaks up water. 
There is a beautiful little vapor cloud coming from the teakettle. 
The air soaks that up too. A wash boiler full of boiling clothes makes 
a big cloud that fills the kitchen. If you open a window or door it 
will all go out and be soaked up by the air. 

If a cloud of vapor is made in a house and cannot get out, let 
us see what happens. The vapor from boiling water is very warm. 
The glass window is colder. The vapor gathers on the glass in a 
mist of tiny drops. The little drops roll together into big drops. 



CUMULUS, A LIGHTLY FLOATING FAIR WEATHER CLOUD. THUNDER SHOWER CLOUD. 



SIFFPINC CATERPILLAR DECORATED WITH DEW- DEW-LADEN GRASSHOPPER ASLEEP ON BED OF 

DROPS. FLOWERS. 

The wonderfully beautiful photographs of dew and frost and also of snow crystals which we 
oresent were furnished for this volume by Mr. Wilson A. Bentley, who is recognized as the pioneer in 
microphotography and who has been employed by the government in this work for many years. 


HOAR FROST ON BLACKBERRY LEAF 


HOAR FROST ON GRASS BLADE 




FEATHER-FERN FROSTWORK ON WINDOW. 


SCROLL FROSTWORK ON WINDOW. 




DEVELOPMENT OF ICE CRYSTAL FROM SMALL ROUND 
TO LACE-LIKE FORM. 


CORAL-LIKE BRANCH SHOWING FEATHER TYPE 
IN DETAIL. 














WATER 


77 


These get so heavy that they roll down the glass. They roll down 
the walls, too, and drop from the ceiling. If vapor is not turned 
out of doors it makes a room damp. That is just what happens 
when it rains. The vapor in the air goes up into the sky. When it 
finds a cold layer of air it rolls into large drops and falls. 

Vapor is always going up. Most of it goes up from the ocean, 
the lakes and rivers. Three fourths of our big world is covered with 
water, you know. The sun warms the top layer of water and turns 
it into vapor. Every leaf and blade of grass on the land has water 
in it. The sun steals this water, too. Sometimes it takes so much 
and gives so little back again that the grass turns brown, and the 
leaves wilt. Every animal and plant drinks water and breathes it 
out again from the lungs, or gives it to the air through little holes 
in the skin called pores. You know how you perspire on a hot day? 
Little beads of water ooze out, all over you. You can find your pores 
with a mag-ni-fy-ing glass. You can find pores in green leaves, too. 

Plants and animals perspire more on a hot day than on a cold 
one. The land and water give off more vapor in the summer than 
in the winter. Wring a handkerchief out of hot water, hang it 
in the sun and see how quickly it dries. Set a shallow pan of water 
in the sun and see how soon the water disappears. The air is always 
thirsty. It drinks like a greedy fish. 

But then, it is not stingy. It gives back every bit of water it 
gets. But it does not always give it back where it got it. Some¬ 
times it rises in vapor from the ocean, goes up in the sky to a layer 
of cold air, and falls back into the ocean almost as quick as you 
can say Jack Robinson. But it’s a very good thing for little boys 
and girls and trees and bees, that all the vapor doesn’t do that. The 
ocean doesn’t need the water rightaway, and the land does. A great 
deal of vapor goes on long journeys. It uses the wind for horses. 
Haven’t you seen fleecy clouds floating across the sky? They were 
riding on the wind. The winds find it no trouble at all to carry these 
vapor clouds along with them. The vapor clouds travel until they 
strike a cold layer of air. Then they roll into rain drops and fall. 

As oceans are the great vapor tanks, so mountains are the chief 
rain makers. The tops of mountains are very cold, and they are 
so high up in the air that the vapor clouds bump right into them 
and turn to rain. In the winter the air is so cold that the rain, in 
falling, freezes into snow. Wide river valleys, islands and sea coasts, 
get a great deal of rain and snow, too, if the winds blow over them 


78 


WATER 


from the ocean. If the wind blows away from the land, so that it 
gets no rain, that land becomes a desert. 

Just as the ocean is a great tank for making vapor, so the moun¬ 
tains and woods and cold countries are big storage houses for snow; 
much of the summer rain is lost. It runs off at once into streams, 
or is soon taken up again by the sun, in vapor. But snow lies for 
months, in cold, high, or shaded places. In the spring it melts slowly 
and soaks into the fields. It takes snow a long time to get into rivers. 
It gives plants and seeds water just when they need it, to help them 
grow. A farmer can get along in a dry summer, if there has been 
a wet winter. 

In the story about land you saw what a big part water plays 
in this world of ours. Every drop of rain that falls takes up just 
as much dust as it can carry on its tiny round back, and hurries 
away with it. It washes the dust and smoke and bad smells out 
of the air, and leaves it pure and clean. It washes the dust from 
all plants and makes them bright. It would give you a merry shower 
bath if you stood in it. It washes the houses and the streets. You 
can see muddy water running down the gutters. How clean every¬ 
thing is, even the pebbles in the road, after a bright, hard rain. 
Mother Earth has had her face washed, and she looks as if she liked it! 

Sometimes vapor clouds cannot get above the earth. You 
know the steam from the boiling clothes could not get out of the 
kitchen until you opened a window at the top. If the air lies very 
heavy above it and does not open a place for vapor to go up, it lies 
on the earth. Such low clouds are called fogs. You remember the 
kitchen walls dripped with vapor, making the room damp? Thick 
fogs make people and plants almost as wet as rain. Fogs are oftenest 
seen over the ocean, lakes, river valleys and swamp land. Sometimes 
they cover miles of sea, and shut in ships with milky white curtains 
of vapor. Then the ships must blow fog horns to keep other ships 
from running into them. The morning sun pulls a fog up into the 
sky, or a brisk wind scatters it through the air. 

There is always some vapor in the air near the earth, even if 
there isn’t enough for you to see it. If a pitcher of cold water stands 
in a room a little while, beads of vapor form on the outside, just 
as they did on the cold window pane. Sometimes the earth is cold 
enough to collect vapor beads from the air. When a cool night follows 
a hot day, the earth becomes colder than the air above it. So the 
warm vapor collects on cold plants, and spangles them with dew 





BEAUTIFUL HIGH ALTITUDE CRYSTAL. 


JEWELLED CENTER. 


A BEAUTIFULLY ETCHED CRYSTAL. 


FEATHERY LOCAL STORM TYPE. 


LOW ALTITUDE TYPE 


HIGH AND LOW ALTITUDE COMBINED. 








BEAUTIFUL STAR-SHAPED DESIGN. 


PRISM-LIKE CRYSTAL FROM HIGH ALTITUDE. 


ELABORATELY ETCHED DESIGN. 


A RARE BEAUTIFULLY ETCHED CRYSTAL 


COLD HIGH ALTITUDE. 


ISOLID HIGH ALTITUDE CRYSTAL. 
























WATER 


79 


drops. If the night is very cold when dew forms, the little dew- 
drops are frozen on the plants. Then we have Jack Frost. 

Jack Frost is busy with you, too. He takes the vapor of your breath 
and per-spi-ra-tion, as you lie warm in bed, and makes pictures with it 
on the cold window pane. Such pretty pictures! They are all mosses 
and ferns and grass spears, and spangles to trim fairy queen’s dresses. 

Cold is a wonderful artist with water. It makes snow crystals 
and hailstone pearls. Snow is made by rain drops falling through 
air that is at the freezing point. The drops burst, when they freeze. 
Now, when things burst they make noises. You know how it is when 
fire crackers ex-plode? And pop-corn? If you were away up in 
the clouds, when it was snowing, and you had the ears of a fairy, 
no doubt .you could hear the tiny rain drops explode into snow. 

The Indians called pop-corn the corn that flowers. So snow 
is rain that blossoms. 1 he next time you see a quiet snow storm, 
when the snow falls in large soft flakes, ask your mother for a piece 
of black velvet or cloth. Put it out of doors to get cold, but keep 
it dry. Then catch some snow flakes on it and study them through 
your pocket microscope. Most of them will look like little broken 
feathers. But if you are patient, you will be sure to find some that 
are perfect, six-pointed stars. The points will be veined and fringed 
like the petals of a flower. All snow flakes should be six sided or 
pointed crystals. Most of them are torn by the wind, or get their 
points knocked off by falling against other flakes. 

Hailstones are made in quite a different way from snow flakes. 
Snow falls only in the winter, but hail storms come in summer, on 
hot days. Weather men think that when rain drops are formed in 
clouds, and are all ready to fall, they are suddenly pulled up much 
higher, into freezing air. The rain drops freeze but do not burst. 
Then they fall through other rain clouds,, and mbre water freezes 
on the balls of ice. They are tossed up and down until they become 
so heavy that they drop like bullets. They drop so fast that they 
pass through the warm air near the earth without melting. Some¬ 
times they are as big as pigeon’s eggs. Find a very big one, some 
day, and ask papa to cut it across quickly, with his strong knife. 
You will find that the hailstone was made in layer rings like a lily 
bulb. The oyster makes the beautiful pearl in the same way. 
Around a hard center it puts layers of the pearl with which it lines 
its shell house. The hailstone pearl is just as beautiful as the shell 
pearl, but it melts so fast it is hard to study it. 


80 


WATER 


But you can study larger pieces of ice. On very cold mornings 
you sometimes find a glass of water frozen. The water did not fill 
the glass, and was level. But the ice is pushed to the top, and into 
a little mound in the middle. When water freezes into ice it takes 
more room. Big people say it expands. In reading about land you 
learned that rocks are split by water freezing and expanding in the 
cracks. If water freezes in water pipes in a house, the pipes burst. 
Then a plumber has to come to mend them. Running water does 
not freeze as easily as still water. So, on cold nights, it would be 
a good thing to leave a faucet a little open, to keep the water flowing 
through the pipes. 

Ice is lighter than water, that is, it fills more space for its weight, 
so it floats on water. It forms on top of water first, and freezes down- 
ward. You never can tell just how thick it is from the top. Before 
you try to slide or skate on a pond or river, you should take a hot 
poker and melt a hole through the ice to see how thick it is. And 
when ice is ready to break up, it gets “rotten” or spongy, first. You 
must always obey a “danger” sign that grown people put up on ice. 

It is fine to see ice break up in a river. But keep off the bridges. 
The big blocks of ice crash against timbers and stone piers, and some¬ 
times destroy the bridges. Sometimes, in fogs, icebergs crash into 
ships and sink them. When you crossed the ocean you may have 
seen icebergs as big as hills, floating in the sea. If you did you 
wondered how they were made. 

Do you remember the ice rivers, or glaciers, in the high valleys 
of the Alps mountains? Away up north, where the Esquimos live, 
all the rivers are frozen. They melt a little in the summer, but more 
snow falls every year than is melted. The new snow presses on 
the old below, and squeezes it into ice, or very hard water rock, 
just as sea water presses sand into stone. This ice is pushed down 
the river beds by the weight above. The ice rivers reach the sea 
just as all other rivers do. In the summer the ice that is near the 
sea melts, or it becomes “rotten” and breaks off in large chunks. 
Those chunks are icebergs. They float into warmer water and melt. 

It may have been a hundred years since the icebergs you saw 
were fleecy vapor clouds, riding on the wind-horses, in the blue sky. 
But there they were at last, in their old home in the ocean. Soon 
the berg will melt. Then the sun will turn it into vapor again, to 
begin another journey. (See Water, Ocean, Sea, Glacier, 
Waterpower, etc.) 


AIR 


81 


III. AIR 

Besides land and water on the earth, there is something that 
is all around it, and all through both land and water. You cannot 
see it, or feel it, or taste it, or smell it, or hear it. But you can prove 
that it is all around you in a great many 
ways. You can take it to pieces, too, and find 
out what it is made of. 

Measure your chest wdth a tape line. 

Twenty-eight inches? Now breathe deep, 
deeper. Hold your breath and measure 
again. Thirty inches! You filled your lungs 
with air. They were just as full of air as 
this glass pitcher is of water. This drinking 
glass looks as if it was empty, but it is full 
of air. Turn it upside down, and press the 
open end on the top of the water in the 
pitcher. Push it straight down under the 
water—steady; don’t let the glass tip up. 

The water rises outside the glass and over¬ 
flows. Lift the glass carefully. It is dry inside, except for a narrow 

rim at the top. Some water did get 
inside, by squeezing the air in the 
glass into a little smaller space. See 
how much water was forced out of 
the pitcher. Nearly a glass full! 

Big boys 'who dive and swim 
under water, fill their lungs with air 
first and hold their breath, so water 
cannot get into them. That is a very 
useful thing to learn to do. It saves 
people from drowning and makes 
them able to save other people. 

Have you ever heard people 
say: “As light as air?” Perhaps 
you think air doesn’t weigh anything. 
Did you ever pump water from a well by working a pump handle? 
You had to pump several times before the water came, didn’t you? 


























82 


AIR 


You had to lift the air out of the hollow pump before the water 
could come in. Pumping air is hard work. There are several simple 
ways of proving that air weighs something. Empty the teakettle 
of water and take the lid off. Now lay a sheet of rubber cloth over 
the top. Put a glass or rubber tube into the spout, and draw the 
air through the tube into your lungs. Breathe again. Suck all the 
air out of the kettle. See the rubber cloth sink. The air on top 
is pushing it into the kettle. There it goes, dowm inside. There 
is no air in the kettle to hold it up. 

Now blow into a little rubber balloon. See it swell. Blow 
again, the rubber stretches. See how much air you can blow 

into it. Ah, it burst! There was more 
air inside the balloon than there was 
outside. Fill a glass with water until it 
overflows. Cover the top with a sheet of 
thick, smooth letter paper. Press it all 
around the edges so you are sure no air 
can get between the glass and the paper, 
to let the water out. Now take hold of the 
glass by the bottom and turn it upside 
down. The water will not spill, the air 
below holds it up. Turn back to Air in 
this book and find out what air weighs. 

Just as fish and sea plants may live 
at the bottom of the ocean of water, so 
land animals and plants live at the bottom 
of the ocean of air. The top of this ocean of air is level, too. Do 
you think the air on a mountain peak would be as deep or as heavy 
as the air in a low valley? A glass full of water has no color. But 
an ocean full of water looks blue. We cannot see air itself, but we 
can see the color of it. When it is forty miles deep air looks 
blue, too. 

Robert likes to climb trees, so he is just the boy to get up on 
a step ladder and take down those dusty curtains. Warm up 
there, Robert? Hot air goes up, so it is always warmer near the 
ceiling. You remember how warm air carries vapor up to make 
rain? It is the hot air that carries smoke up from chimneys. Did 
you ever send up a red paper balloon on the Fourth of July? You 
lit a tiny candle at the bottom. Soon the sides of the balloon swelled 
and stretched tight. Air expands when it is heated. That is, it 



















AIR 


83 


takes less hot air to fill anything than it does cold, so it grows lighter. 
The balloon floated around the sky until the candle burned out. 

Warm air is always going up and cold coming down. Out of 
doors Mother Nature attends to this pushing, but in houses we have 
to help, by letting the warm air out at the top and cold air in at the 
bottom. Air is always in motion unless it is in prison, and prisoned 
air is very bad to breathe'. Still air is dead; live air is always in 
motion. 

Sometimes air rivers flow up and down so rapidly, pushing each 
other out of place that they make—what? See the leaves blowing 
on the trees. Wind! Wind is air that is in a hurry. You can feel 
it. Draw a quick breath. You felt a tiny wind in your nose, didn’t 
you? You cannot feel air, but you can feel wind, or air in motion. 
You can feel the temperature of air, too. Your skin tells you if air 
is hot or cold. You can feel if it is damp or dry. You cannot smell 
air, but you can smell odors in it—the perfume of flowers, the fresh¬ 
ness of rain, bad odors of decay, or smoke. You can train yourself 
to tell if the air in a room is fresh or stale. Doctors always come 
into a sick room with suspicious noses in the air. As we have to pay 
doctors for telling us when the air is bad, let us see if we can find 
out for ourselves. 

When you were up on the step ladder, Robert, did you notice 
anything beside the heat? You felt smothered, then dizzy? You 
don’t feel that way on the hottest summer day out of doors, do you? 
Let us see‘what was the matter with that air. 

Put half an inch of water in a pie pan. Twist a bit of soft news¬ 
paper, light it with a match and drop it into a drinking glass. Let 
the glass fill with smoke, but while the paper is still burning turn 
the glass upside down in the pan of water. The flame goes out, 
leaving some paper unburned. The water rises in the glass, much 
higher than in the pan outside, and stays there. Something was 
burned out of the air, making room for the water to rise. The part 
that is gone is oxygen. If you had shut a live fly in the glass it 
would have died as quickly as the flame. Animals and fire cannot 
live without oxygen. By breathing air in you burn up oxygen. It 
would not take you very long to use up all the oxygen in a small 
room. Then, if you couldn’t get any fresh air at all you would “go 
out” like the burning paper, and the fly in the glass. 

Beside using up the oxygen in the air, when you breathe in, 
you make a poisonous gas when you breathe out. Fire does the 


84 


AIR 


same thing. Here is a bottle of clear lime water. It cost two cents 
at the drug store. Divide this lime water between two small fruit 
jars. In one of the jars hang an inch of lighted candle above the 
lime water, by a wire twisted around the candle and hooked over 
the top. Cover the top of the jar with a folded napkin. The flame 
goes out as soon as the oxygen in the jar is used up, of course. But 
something else happens, too. The clear lime water turns milky. 
The flame gave out a gas called carbon dioxide, or carbonic 
acid gas. 

Put a tube of rubber or glass, or a big lemonade straw, into the 
lime water in the other jar. Blow your breath through the tube, 
into the water. You can tell when you have forced your breath 
in, for you make bubbles. Do this several times. This water turns 
milky, too, from the carbonic acid gas in your breath. Your breath 
is warm so it goes up to the ceiling. The air made by a gas flame, 
a heat register or radiator goes up, too. All this warm air has been 
used by fire and by people. The oxygen has been burned out of 
it, and carbonic acid has put into it. It would not feed a fire or a 
pair of lungs, and it becomes even poisonous. This is bad air. It 
will go out of doors if you help it, and be purified. 

Beside helping to keep people well, to know about air may 
help them at any time to put out a fire. Fire cannot burn without 
oxygen, so it can be smothered. If your clothing catches fire roll 
up in a rug or heavy bed clothes. Keep the fire from getting air 
and it will go out. 

Out of doors, nature is always purifying air. She does it by 
having plants and animals live together. Plants make oxygen and 
use up the carbonic acid gas that is poisonous to breathing animals. 
In the sea fishes and water plants help each other, in the same way. 
They get air out of the water. Seeds and worms and beetles get 
air out of the earth. If you plant seeds too deep, or pack the earth 
too hard above them, they will rot. So you must read the directions 
on your little paper of flower seeds and obey them, or you will have 
no flowers. You can kill little animals by stopping up their holes 
sometimes. 

See how wonderfully this world is mixed up. Earth is solid, 
water is fluid, air a gas. But there is water and air in the earth, 
earth and air in the water, and earth dust and water vapor in the 
air. They all need each other, and plants and animals need all 
three. Air is the freest and sets everything else in motion. 


AIR 


85 


Wind, or air in motion, is a great worker and wonder-worker. 
It tosses the tree tops, whirls the dust, carries vapor clouds to make 
rain, scatters seeds. It turns the long arms of windmills and sends 
sailing vessels flying over the water. It waits for nobody. It says 
how-do-you-do and good-by, and is gone. There isn’t a bit of use 
to get out of humor with it, if it blows our hats off and turns 
umbrellas wrong side out. The wind can’t help blowing. It is being 
pushed and jostled about itself. Besides it has the most important 
work in the world to do—keeping air in motion and purifying it. 
So get off the track. Wind has the right of way. See Air, page 33; 
Respiration, 1602. 


THE STORY OF LIFE 


PART I—PLANTS 


Editor's Note to Mother and Teacher. —Often, before he can talk 
plainly, a little child has some sense of the mystery of life, in himself, his 
playmates, his bird and his dog. Later, he recognizes that the flower and 
tree are alive, too. He asks endless questions about life, its nature and 
origin. Any child old enough to put a little brown seed into the ground, 
with confidence that a flower will grow from it, or who sees a downy chick¬ 
en or crying bird come from a shell, has a natural curiosity about them that 
should be and can be satisfied. 

He can comprehend that all life reproduces itself by means of seeds and 
eggs, and grows from these simple seeds into the more complex form of 
the fully developed offspring. To learn this in the right way is now recog¬ 
nized as the most serious requirement, as it has always been one of the most 
difficult problems, of his education. 

In this “Story of Life” we compare the forms and functions, first of 
plants, then of animals, from the lowest, simplest types to the highest and 
most complex. So far as the editors are aware, this is the first attempt ever 
made to present Biology, or the Science of Life, to little children, and to 
show them some of the more striking resemblances among plants and an¬ 
imals which point toward a common relationship to one Great Source. The 
stories are as fascinating as fairy tales. They open up to the child, a new 
world of wonders; a world of intelligent plan, of order, of beauty and of 
the brotherhood of living things. They teach reverence, sympathy, and a 
sense of the worth and sacredness of all life. 

Because of its appeal to the imagination—particularly of the young 
and in the treatment of a difficult scientific subject—the dramatic form of 
expression is here frequently employed; as “The Earthworm Puts on Arm¬ 
or.” But the discussion of any particular tfieory has been purposely avoid¬ 
ed, because we believe it would be out of place, and because these great 
and sacred truths, upon which we all agree, seemed to us of so much larger 
importance. 


86 



PART I-PLANTS 


I. WE MEET THE FAIRY GODMOTHER 

What if you had never seen an apple, or an apple tree! Little 
Esquimo boys and girls never saw them. So, just imagine that 
you never saw them, either. 

Then, if a traveler from a strange country should bring you a 
little brown seed, a green leaf, a pink blossom, a bit of the wood 
of the apple tree and of the bark, and a juicy red apple to eat, and 
should tell you that they were all parts of one plant and had grown 
out of each other, and were made from one common food, what 
would you think? Very likely you would say: “What a lovely 
fairy story. Please tell another one.” 

If he was a very wise man he might say: “Very well, here’s 
another one just like it.” He would ask you to look at baby brother. 
Even Esquimo children have baby brothers. See his dewy, pink 
satin skin. Feel the soft flesh under it, and the hard round bones 
under that. Feel his loving little heart beat. Look into his merry 
blue eyes; brush the sunny curls on his head, and let him bite your 
finger with his pearly teeth. Watch mama cut the shell-pink finger 
nails that can scratch like pussy’s. Those things—skin, flesh, bones, 
heart, eyes, hair, teeth and nails—all so different, are all a part of 
the baby. They are all fed and made to grow on just one food— 
milk. Then, maybe you’d be able to believe that the apple tree 
might be a really, truly story. 

And that would help you understand that all living things— 
plants and animals—the baby and the apple tree, all came from one 
seed, and are sort of far-away cousins to each other. Isn’t it pleasant 
to think that we are related to butterflies and birds and apple blos¬ 
soms? Only children, and a few very wise grown people, can under¬ 
stand how this can be. Children can imagine things. They can 
imagine what fairies would look like if there were fairies. So they 
can understand the wonderful true stories that science tells, about 
things as strange as fairies. And then children are curious, and it 

is easier for them to change their minds. That makes their minds 

87 


88 


WE MEET THE FAIRY GODMOTHER 


grow. The mind is like everything else in the w r orld. It can grow 
only by changing. 

Don’t you like for papa to open the back of his watch so you 
can see the wheels go ’round? When he does that’ you want to know 
what makes them go ’round, don’t you? You want to know how 
and why each part of the watch works for and with the others. A 
plant or an animal is more wonderful than a watch. A watch runs 
down, and has to be wound again. But plants and animals have 
little live wheels that wind themselves, and keep going as long as 
they live. And before they die they start other plants and animals 
just like themselves—or even a little better—to going. 

To understand it all you will have to go a long way back. There 
couldn’t have been a w T atch until there was a wheel, then another 
wheel to turn on that, and a spring to make them turn. So there 
could never have been a plant or an animal until there was a little 
living wheel, or cell. Did you know that men of science, who have 
studied life in plants and animals, have found out what that cell 
looks like, and what it is made of? It is just a tiny, egg-shaped bag 
so small that you cannot see it, except under a microscope, and as 
colorless as a drop of water. 

Still, that little living cell has a skin or thin wall around it, 
and it is filled with a drop of magical jelly. The jelly is alive. What 
is it to be alive? A bit of sponge can soak up water, but it cannot 
use it, or make anything out of it. A silk worm eats mulberry leaves, 
grow r s larger on this food, makes a silk cradle to go to sleep in, and 
hatches out into a butterfly that lays more silk worm eggs. To 
be alive, is to eat and grow, and turn the food into something else 
and, don’t forget this, make more living things like itself. That 
is why we know that the little drop of jelly is alive. It is the smallest, 
simplest live thing in the world. Of course, it is so important it has 
to have a name. It is called Pro'to-plasm. 

The wonderful cell full of protoplasm is the fairy godmother 
of every living thing in the world. It is the “once upon a time” 
with which the story of life begins. It has done more wonderful 
things than to turn pumpkins into gilded coaches and mice into 
horses. It didn’t do them all at once, just by waving a wand. It 
began in a very humble way, and took one small step at a time. 
At first it was contented to make another little round cell just like 
itself, then another and another and another, all as alike as so 
many peas. But each one of those cells full of protoplasm could 


WE MEET THE FAIRY GODMOTHER 


89 


eat and grow, and keep itself wound up, and make other little cells. 
Then, by and by, after ages and ages, because they were alive and 
their home wasn’t always the same, some of the cells changed a 
little, and they kept on changing every time they had to. 

Now, every step that was taken forward from the little cell 
full of protoplasm, lives in some form today. So we can follow 
the story of life, step by step. You can find the beginning of it 
in a loaf of bread. When your mama makes bread—no, mama 
doesn’t make bread, she helps bread make itself, by—but that’s 
another story. (See Cell, Cell-Doctrine. Protoplasm, Biology.) 


90 


HOW THE YEAST PLANT GROWS IN A LOAF OF BREAD 


II. HOW THE YEAST PLANT GROWS IN A LOAF OF BREAD 

Which would you rather do, get inside a loaf of bread, or put 
the bread inside of you? 

That makes you laugh. But you never tried getting inside a 
loaf of bread. If you get inside before it is baked, you will find 
plenty of playmates. Bread dough is just full of little living cells 
of protoplasm. They eat the bread before you do. They eat and 
eat and grow, and make millions of other cells like themselves. Let 
us watch them. They are very active little plants so they can easily 
be studied. 

Your mama buys a yeast cake when she wants to make bread. 
It may be dry and hard, or it may be a soft paste wrapped in tin 
foil. It dias an odd smell, and does not seem alive at all. Mama 
isn’t sure that it is alive. She takes a half cup of warm water, and 
a little flour and a tiny bit of sugar and mixes them. Then she 
breaks her yeast cake into the cup, stirs them all together and stands 
the cup in a warm place. If you ask her why she does that, she 
may say: “I want to see if that yeast is alive.” 

Now you watch it! Soon little bubbles begin to burst. The 
batter swells and foams, and rises to the top of the cup. Study it 
with a microscope. The whole mass is in motion. Mama says the 
yeast ferments, but that is just another name for growing, for yeast 
plants. There, the secret is out. Mama made a garden. The flour 
and water and sugar are soil. In the soil she scattered yeast plants— 
just as a farmer scatters wheat seeds in a field. The yeast is a water 
plant and will grow in warm water alone, but it will grow faster if 
given the starch in flour. And it likes sugar, too, just as you do. 
It uses these things to grow on and, in using them, it changes them. 
It turns the starch and sugar sour, and gives off the same gas— 
carbon dioxide—that animals give off in breathing. This gas is 
what puffs the bread so it rises to the top of the pan. There is very 
little food in the cup. Soon the yeast plants will stop growing and 
making gas. Then the paste will fall flat. Mama must hurry and 
get a big pan full of dough ready, to give the yeast plants more food. 

This time she takes a quart of water, and a lot of flour, and the 
foaming yeast in the cup. She beats the batter with a big spoon to 
scatter the yeast plants all through the soil and to beat in air. too. 


HOW THE YEAST PLANT GROWS IN A LOAF OF BREAD 


91 


All living things need air, you know. Yeast plants want their food 
warm just as the baby does; but they grow best in the dark, so mama 
covers the bread pan. The yeast plant is that little round cell filled 
with the magic jelly, protoplasm. It likes to float around in a warm 
bath. In some strange way it soaks food through its thin cell wall 
and grows larger. When it is grown up, it sprouts another little 
bud of a cell filled with jelly. Sometimes these buds break away 
from the parent cell and start a new family, but sometimes they 
hang together in a little knot or string of cells. The yeast plant 
has neither stem nor roots nor leaves nor blossoms nor fruit. Each 
little bag of jelly is a whole plant. 

There are a great many plants on earth much like yeast, that 
you can find and study. One of them likes bread after it is baked. 



Yeast, showing single cells and how they grow and multiply by budding. 


It is blue mould. Blue mould grows on old bread, and on the top 
of glasses of jelly. Under a microscope it is very beautiful. It is 
a feathery mass of delicate blue threads. Black moulds and mildews, 
rust, on wheat, black smut on corn, and puff ball smoke, all belong 
to the same family of plants. Cells of these kinds of plants are always 
in the air. You can make a garden of them by leaving a saucer 
of flour paste, fruit jelly, or a bit of stale bread exposed, for a week 
or two. 

They have a family name. They are called Fungi (fun-ji). 
The blue mould is often called Fairy Fungi. It looks like a fairy 
forest. Toad-stools and mushrooms are fungi, too. The fungi all 
have one very bad habit. They don’t earn their own living. They 
live on other plants, and even on animals. But they like dead or 
dying things best. Around old trees and fallen logs you will find 
toad stools and mushrooms. There are two ways in which you may 
know the fungi. They live on some other living, or dead and decay- 


92 


HOW THE YEAST PLANT GROWS IN A LOAF OF BREAD 


ing, plant or animal, and they are never green. They do not have 
stems or roots or leaves or flowers or fruit or seeds. Any tiniest cell 
of a fungus, if put into the right soil will grow and multiply cells, 
just as the yeast plant does in the batter. It is the very lowest 
order of plants. 

But it became a higher kind of plant when it had to. Fungi 
like the dark. The first plants were born in the dark of deep sea 
water. You know earthquakes lifted the floor of the ocean. The 

plants were lifted, too. As the plants 
came near the surface of the water 
they got more light. Do you know 
what sunlight does to plants? Did 
you ever find a board lying on the 
grass? The next time you find one, 
lift it. You will find that the grass 
under the board has turned yellow 
or white. Now, you know that a 
Mushroom, which is one kind of part of the grass wasn’t born green 
fungus. and part of it white. The outside 

leaves of a head of cabbage or lettuce are green, while the inside leaves, 
shut away in the dark, are white. Sunshine turns plants green. 
Nature took as long a step upward as the giant who wore seven 
league boots, when the first sea plants got enough sunlight to turn 
green. Green plants were lifted clear out of the fungi class. They 
began to earn their own living for one thing, and they learned to 
do a lot of things. 

Now, nature might have made one kind of cell and magic jelly 
for the fungi, and another kind for green plants, but she didn’t. 
She seems to like to see how many different things she can make 
of a few simple things. All the plants and animals begin to grow 
in a little cell of protoplasm. So, when we understand the fungi, 
the simplest of all plants, we have learned the A. B. C.’s of life. 
Knowing the letters, we can spell the words and read the story of 
the living world. (See Fungi, Yeast, Mould, Mildew, Rust, Smut, 
Mushrooms, Toadstools, etc.) 





SAILOR PLANTS AND ROBINSON CRUSOES 


93 


III. SAILOR PLANTS AND ROBINSON CRUSOES 

The first little plants were sailors. As they floated, about in 
the water, the living drop of jelly or protoplasm, soaked food through 
the thin walls of the cells. One cell budded from another, and broke 
away to start a new family, or clung to the parent cells in a bead¬ 
like string, or in a knot that floated together. Then they budded 
all around the sides and formed mats and flat net-works of cells, 
held together by a gelatine in the cell walls. 

Some of these nets and mats floated on rocks, in quiet places 
where the motion of the water was not strong enough to float them 
off again. As the rocks sheltered them, the plants were not so easily 
torn apart. The cells that lay on the rocks could not gather so 
much food, so they learned to cling. The free, floating cells gathered 
food, and budded and spread into feathery, leaf-like fronds. The 
plants lived in a colony, you see. So, by and by, they divided the 
labor just as people do in a village. It was the business of some 
plants, or cells, to cling to the rocks. Others waved in the water 
and gathered food. It wasn’t necessary, any longer, and there 
wasn’t room, for each cell to bud, although it could have done so. 
Certain cells began to collect budding material, in little raised dots 
on the fronds. When these dots ripened they were washed off. 
These bud dots were spores. They w r ere not seeds, they were just 
the hints of seeds; and the cells that clung to the rocks were hints 
of roots; and the cells that spread out and floated were hints of 
leaves. All together they formed—seaweeds! Seaweeds belong to 
a family called algae. Algae are higher plants than fungi. But 
these colonies of cells did not deserve to go into a higher class until 
something else happened. 

Some of these plants were born near the surface of the water 
where there was more air and sunlight. The sunlight turned them 
green. A green plant can take raw material like earth, air and 
water and, with the aid of sunlight, make its own food. Algae are 
found in oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, marshes and warm springs, 
everywhere. Some of them are very beautiful, in a great variety 
of forms and colors. The very commonest algae that you can all 
find, almost everywhere, is the green scum that forms on quiet ponds 
and swamps. Scum is all broken up into single plants, or knots and 


94 


SAILOR PLANTS AND ROBINSON CRUSOES 


strings of cells, and can be easily separated and studied under a 
microscope. 

There were some seaweeds that did not have a chance to become 
green. They grew far down in the deep sea, under tons of dark, 
almost airless water. They lay on rocks, flat and motionless and 
sluggish. They grew slowly but were hard to kill. They learned 
to live in colonies, to cling, to spread, and to grow spore buds, so 
they were a little above the fungi. By and by they were lifted, 
with the rocks they grew on. You know earthquakes lift the ocean 
floor. Parts of the deep ocean floor have been lifted suddenly into 
rocky islands. When that happened these colorless seaweed colonies 
were lifted, too, and shipwrecked in the air. They were just like 
Robinson Crusoe. 

They wanted to live. If you were lost in the woods you would 
hunt roots and berries and nuts. You would strike stones together 
to make a spark and start a fire. You would make a bed of leaves 
in a cave. You would do your very best to live, wouldn’t you? 
Robinson Crusoe was lost on an island a long time. He had to do 
many things he had never done before, and he changed so much 
that his best friends wouldn’t have known him. If those deep¬ 
water seaweeds had been lifted slowly, to the air and sunlight, but 
still kept under the water, they would have become green algae. 
But they were castaways on the land before they got far enough 
along to be algae. 

Most of them, millions and billions of them died. But those 
that died, decayed, mixed with the sand or rock waste and made 
the first soil that covered the bare rocks. Some of the water weeds 
managed to live by clinging to the rocks and decaying plants. But, 
like Robinson Crusoe, they had to learn new ways of living, and they 
grew to be very different from the algae, their water cousins, and 
different from the fungi, their ancestors. 

For one thing, they became very dry and gray. They spread 
in broad scales to turn as many cells as possible to the air and rain. 
But they never turned green. You may find such plants today, 
on the rocks of the highest mountains, under the snows of cold 
countries, where grass will not grow, on dead or dying trees and 
fence rails, and on old house shingles. And, scientists tell us, they 
are to be found on the deepest rocks in the sea. They are called 
lichens, (li'kens). Some people think lichens are dry mosses, but 
they are not. They are plants between the fungi of the yeast and 


SAILOR PLANTS AND ROBINSON CRUSOES 


95 


mildew, and the green algae of seaweeds. They are shipwrecked 
sailors, who learned a new way of life through many hardships. 

Like the fungi, lichens live on other plants. They cannot get 
their own living. But, like the algae, they have learned to cling, 
to spread into leaf-like fronds, and to form spores or bud cells. In 
them is a hint of coming roots and leaves and seeds. They are often 
beautiful and are always curious They are generally flat, dry, 
crinkly-edged scales, colored gray or silver or black. Sometimes, on 
old tree trunks, they are in thick, fluted ridges, and colored yellow 
or bright orange or white. With a microscope you can see that the 
gray scales are powdered with dusty round dots. Those are the 
spores or bud cells. When ripe the wind blows them, or the rain 
washes them away. 

There is another thing the lichen has learned. Unable to turn 
green and so make its own food, it often goes into partnership with 
its higher born water cousin, the algae. It does it in this way. The 
lichen is made up of a network of thread-like cells. Each mesh 
holds a little water. Algae spores, floating in the air and looking 
for water to grow in, find enough for just one cell, perhaps, in each 
mesh of the lichen. So they promptly move in. Often there are so 
many algae plants on the gray net surface of a lichen, that they 
turn it to a soft sage green color, very bright and moist. The algae 
being green, collect food from the sun and air and feed the lichen, 
and the lichen covers the algae with a network of gray thread cells 
to keep it from getting too dry. 

Nature makes many partnerships between plants and animals 
that can help each other. Bees and butterflies help the flowers 
grow seeds. Men help plants to grow, and make friends of horses 
and dogs. Isn’t it wonderful that, as low in the scale of life as algae 
and lichens, we should find this water plant and its shipwrecked 
cousin helping each other? (See Algae, Lichen, Chlorophyceae, 
Chlorophyll.) 


96 


WATER BABIES THAT LIVE ON LAND 


IV. WATER BABIES THAT LIVE ON LAND 

Did you ever see a tad-pole? A tad-pole is a baby frog, you 
know, but it looks more like a baby fish. It breathes through feather¬ 
like gills. You can keep one in a gold fish bowl and watch it turn 
into a frog. Behind the gills a pair of little flippers pop out. They 
grow into legs. Then the gills go inside and become lungs. The 
hind legs come next. The tail grows shorter, and the animal broader. 
One day the tad-pole is gone. The frog jumps out on a rock and 
catches an insect for dinner. He sits blinking in the sun as if he 
wonders how he did it. The frog is a land animal that grew from 
a water baby. It likes to live on the edge of a pond where it can 
dive and swim whenever it feels like it. 

There are plants something like that. They were born sea¬ 
weeds or algae. You remember that some of the algae were so near 
the surface of the water that they turned green in the sunlight, and 
became able to make their own food? Many of them were lifted 
slowly, on rising seacoasts until, at last, they found themselves in 
the water part of the time, and part of the time out in the air. If 
these algae were to live, they had to jump from swimming tad-pole 
seaweeds into—not quite, but almost into froggy mosses with legs, 
and air-breathing lungs. They became those curious plants that we 
know as liver-worts. Like frogs they can live only in wet places; 
on tide-water faces of cliffs, on rocky river banks, around ponds 
and springs and even floating on patches of quiet water in marshes. 

He-pat-i-cae is the book name of liver-worts. That is con¬ 
fusing, because there is a little pink flower that blooms in the woods 
and meadows in the spring, that is called the hepatica. We won’t 
say he-pat-i-cae again, and we wouldn’t say it even this once, if 
you didn’t need to turn back to that word in Volume II, page 865, 
of this book, to see some pictures, and to read more about liver¬ 
worts. There, a scientist who has made a study of life in plants and 
animals, says: “The liver-worts were probably derived from the 
algae and, in turn, have given rise to mosses and ferns.” 

Very likely this is the way the algae managed to turn into 
liver-worts. You remember the algae learned to cling to rocks, to 
spread into feathery fronds and to grow bud cells or spores. These 
are hints of roots and leaves and seeds. If you lift a frond of sea- 


WATER BABIES THAT LIVE ON LAND 


97 


weed from the water the hair-like cells will all fall together, so they 
look to be one narrow blade-like leaf. Every time the tide-water 
drops away and leaves seaweeds out in the air on rocks, the fronds 
fall and mat together. 

After being left out a great many times, some of these frond 
cells learned to cling together, even when the waves washed back 
over them. The scattered strings of cells went into partnership 
and became a leaf. The clinging cells on the underside of the leaf 
grew into longer, stronger hairs to anchor the plant more firmly 
to the rock. They learned not only to cling, but to suck up water 
to feed the cells above. Then the little spore buds raised their heads, 
and tried to grow into something that would attend to the business 
of starting new plants better. 

Liver-worts look much like very green lichens or very flat mosses, 
but they can easily be told from both. No lichen is so green and 
moist, and the smallest mosses have true stems and roots. The 
liver-wort is just a mat of tiny, flat leaves. One leaf grows out of 
another, without a sign of a stem. The whole plant is just a thousand 
leafed mat. The upper side is the stem and leaf and flower, all in 
one. It is green, and can make food out of sunlight and rain and 
air. The lower side is white, and from it grows little thread-like, 
white hairs that act as anchor cables and water suckers. Every 
leaf that sprouts sends down its own little rootlets below, and grows 
spore cases on top. 

Every part of this flat, mossy little liver-wort is so small that 
you will have to put it under a microscope to find out how wonderful 
and beautiful it is. You will find the leaves clearly 
marked; each a round, flat, green scale with curled 
up edges, and spotted with darker green. These spots 
are raised above the surface, and are of two different 
shapes; but you will never find both shapes on one 
leaf. 

One of these spots looks like a tiny umbrella, 
upturned and fringed with spun-silk threads. Between 
the fringes peep little green cups or bottles with balls 
in them. They look as if they were waiting for some¬ 
thing. They are. On the next leaf, perhaps, the 
raised spot looks like a toad stool with a star shaped top. It starts 
to grow from the under side of the leaf, curves around the edge, and 
suddenly stands up straight. On its flat top are little pocket holes. 



98 


WATER BABIES THAT LIVE ON LAND 


In each pocket is an egg floating in a bath smaller than the tiniest 
dewdrop. The egg is full of cells, that are scattered in the water 
when the egg bursts. Each of these cells has two little whip-lashes 
that thrash around in the water like wiggle tails. They seem to 
have minds of their own and to know just what to do. They make 
straight for the mouths of those bottles on the umbrella spots, whip 
themselves inside and find the little balls. The ball and the whip 
lash cell unite, and make spores. 

The spores of the liver-wort are not exactly like flower seeds. 
They are really cases of spores, like the single spore grains on lichens 
and seaweeds. The plant has taken all that trouble just to be sure 
there will be enough spores to grow more plants. When the cases 
are ripe they burst, and the spores are carried on bundles of long 
threads that snap and scatter them. The liver-wort seems to like 
to use whips to drive itself along. 

What wonderful changes from the simple-celled algae floating 
in the water, or waving from its rock anchor! The liver-wort has 
made a leaf; it has dreamed of a root, in its white hair-like suckers; 
and it has whipped and lashed itself into storing its spore cells into 
a sort of seed case. 

Like the frog that grew from the tad-pole, this water born baby 
must sit and blink in the sun and wonder how it did it! (See Hepat- 
icae, Spore, Frog.) 


PYGMY PLANTS AND THEIR WONDERFUL LABORS 


99 


V. PYGMY PLANTS AND THEIR WONDERFUL LABORS 

Next above the liver-wort, is a plant that will tell you how to 
find your way home if you ever get lost in the woods. One of the 
very first lessons a little Indian boy learned, when he went hunting, 
was that moss grows mostly on the north side of trees. It does that 
because the north side is damp and shady. If liver-wort is the child 
of the algae, or seaweed, moss is the grandchild and the fern the 
great-grandchild. They all like plenty of water, each one needing 
a little less water, and able to bear a little stronger sunlight. Each 
next higher plant learned new things. The liver-wort learned to 
grow leaves, to send down little sucker hairs and to fill spore cases. 
Let us see what moss learned to do. 

Moss grows from a spore like the liver-wort. It nestles in any 
damp, shady spot it can find; on a porous rock or the bark of a tree, 
or on a soft bit of ground. At first it grows little strings of green 
cells, very much like its grandmother, the seaweed. These lie flat. 
They seem to be food cells for little brown rootlets that burrow into 
the soil, and for buds that rise in the air. 

It doesn’t matter at all which side of the moss-spore lies on the 
ground. The strings of food cells spread around it; the rootlets go 
down from the underside, and the buds rise from the upper. Neither 
the root nor the stem are in the spore at all, only cell material, 
whose business it is to get food from the earth and the air. 
The cells on the ground burrow for food, and the upper cells 
reach for it. The interesting part about moss is that the upper 
growth does not flatten into a leaf, that sprouts another leaf, like 
the liver-wort. It grows upward into a little stem, and leaves 
sprout from the stem. It grows upward, oh, quite a little bit of an 
inch, budding leaves all around the stem, and finally bears a little 
seed case on the tip. 

Bravo! Don’t you feel like clapping your hands? Think how 
long and hard those little yeast cells full of protoplasm had to work, 
before they could make the moss plant with a true root, a stem, a 
leaf and a seed case. But when it has done it moss is still such a 
tiny fairy plant, and so slender and delicate that it cannot stand 
alone. You always find the mosses crowded so closely together that 
they make green plush cushions. This is partly so that the little 


100 


PYGMY PLANTS AND THEIR WONDERFUL LABORS 


plants can hold each other up, and partly too, perhaps, so the spongy 
matted mass can hold plenty of water. One little moss plant, stand¬ 
ing alone, would soon become very dry. If you want to separate 
one plant from a cushion of moss you will have to melt the earth 
out in water, until the little rootlets can be pulled apart. 

There it is, at last, a pigmy pine tree, with a sort of cone-shaped 
pod on the tip. This is often called the moss fruit, but it isn’t a 

fruit as seeds of higher plants are. It is a spore case, very much 

like those of the liver-wort. But here is a funny thing. Moss makes 
seed first, and then a spore case. The seed is borne on the tip of 
the stem. It doesn’t burst or fall off, or go anywhere. It just 
begins to grow right where it was formed. It sends a little anchor 
root down into the mother stem, and a bud upward in the form of 
a little leafless stalk. (See picture in Volume II, page 1282, Musci.) 
On the tip of the stalk is set a pointed and fringed fool’s cap. That 

is a spore case. Mosses, like liver-worts, grow from spores. The 

spores make true plants with root, stem, leaves and seed. But the 
next plants do not grow from these seed. The seed stay on the 
parent plant, and make spores to grow new plants. 

All the strength and cleverness of the moss plant goes into 
making these spore cases on the tip. (See Moss Capsule, page 
1283.) The fool’s cap is really only a husk, like the chaff of wheat. 
Underneath it is a cup, with a curly hair-fringed rim, and a cone 
rising from the middle. The cone is pitted in regular ray-like rows, 
something like the tip of a baby ear of corn before the grains come. 
In these cups are the same little balls as in the liver-wort. On other 
plants nearby and mosses, you know, so closely crowded together 
that they seem like one plant, there are other cups in which those 
double lashed whips thrash around in a bath. You can easily guess 
what they do, for it is the story of the liverwort all over again. The 
whip cells find the ball cells, and the two unite to form spores. When 
the spores are ripe the cases pop open. The spores are carried away 
by the little hairs set around the rim of the cone. 

Having made a leaf, a root, a stem and a seed, what was the 
next thing to be done? You remember the stem of the moss is very 
slender and soft. It couldn’t grow very high, nor stand alone, nor 
keep itself from dying. Just as the green cells of algae live in colonies, 
and so form fronds or feathery hints of leaves, so moss plants live 
in colonies to protect each other. The next step for these baby 
plants is to learn to stand alone. See Moss, Musci. 


HOW THE FERN GREW BONES AND BABIES 


101 


VI. HOW THE FERN GREW BONES AND BABIES 

In order to stand alone you must have a backbone. And you 
must have bones in your legs, too. Your bones are on the inside 
and are covered with muscles. A turtle’s leg bones are on the inside, 
too, but it carries its backbone on the outside. The turtle’s back¬ 
bone is its shell. So you won’t be surprised to learn that trees carry 
their backbones on the outside, in the form of bark. But it took a 
long time for plants to learn to make bones on the outside. 

Did you ever find it hard to break the stem of a field daisy, 
wild aster or golden-rod? Such stems seem to be made of bundles 
of tough threads. They are called fibres. The fibres of the flax 
stem are so strong and fine they are woven into linen cloth. The 
stem of a fern leaf has so many of these tough fibres packed together 
that it is like wire. Fibres are strings of cells. Each little cell has 
a thin wall around it like the yeast cell, through which water can 
easily soak, and air pass. The plant used these strings of cells at first 
to soak up food and air, then to cling to rocks, then to make 
leaves and stems and roots and spores and seeds. Finally she bound 
them in bundles to help her stand alone. 

The fern is nature’s first effort to make bones in plants. The 
fern stem is very slender and bends easily, so easily that the single 
feathery leaf on its tip, sways in the wind like an algae frond in the 
water. We often say fern fronds because of this likeness. But 
they are not fronds. They are true leaves. 

There was a time, ages and ages ago, when ferns were the highest 
kind of plants that grew. For a long time, nature just tried to see 
how many thousand varieties of mosses and ferns she could make. 
Most of them have disappeared as higher forms of life crowded them 
out, but there are still about four thousand kinds of ferns on earth. 
Some of them are rock ferns, almost as small as mosses; some are 
as big as trees. You can see tree ferns in the green houses of 
city parks, and there are whole forests of them in many hot 
countries. 

When the seed of any plant begins to grow, the first little shoot 
is so soft that you can mash it to a green paste between your fingers. 
Even a sprouting oak or maple is as' soft as that. It has no bark. 
The cells have not even hardened into fibres. The fern leaf starts 


102 


HOW THE FERN GREW BONES AND BABIES 


as a little spiral, like a green snail. It does not grow from an upright 
stem like the moss leaf. It is just as if nature said: “ I cannot make 
a stem strong enough yet to stand up and bear many leaves. So I 
will just flatten and bury the stem, and make a broader crown. From 
that a stronger root can burrow into the ground, and many leaves 
rise into the air.” 

The stem of the little curled up snail-like leaf is soft and green, 
but it is quite thick. As the leaf uncurls, this stem seems to stretch, 
and grow more slender. Slowly it stiffens. The strings of cells that 
were simply water pipes and lungs, also become bones to hold it up. 
These bone tubes run right out to the tips of the leaves, growing 
smaller and smaller, as they have less to support. Then, from the 
sides, grow ribs, just as your ribs grow from your backbone. The 

stem of the fern leaf is a hint of a coming tree trunk; 
the veins in the leaf are hints of branches on the 
trunks. The fern leaf is really the far-away promise 
of a forest tree. Most fern-leaves are deeply 
parted between the ribs, clear down to the main 
stem, making branching leaflets. And on the very 
ends of the smallest leaflet veins, around the edges, 
the fern leaf bears its fruit, or spore discs, just as 
the most perfect rose tree bears its flowers and 
seed pods. 

Find a fern leaf that is fully grown, in some 
shady spot in the woods. All around the edges of 
the underside, you will find little rusty spots. 
^.ifSi^r-v^These are very regularly spaced, so you can easily 
Vguess there is some plan. If you look at them 
through a microscope you will see that they all 
grow from the ends of the veins, and are connected 
with the mid-ribs of the leaflet, and those mid-ribs with the 
main stem. (See Filicales, Volume II, page 661.) So all those 
little rusty spots are fed from the root in the ground. The rust spots 
are only tiny, pin-head grains, that look like a brown powder. But 
you will find them fastened tight. The microscope shows them to 
be little brown cases, filled with still smaller grains. These are spores, 
like those on the liver-wort and moss. Around each spore case is 
hung a necklace of crystal beads. These draw together, tighter and 
tighter, until they force the spore case to burst open, and shoot out 
the ripe spores. 



HOW THE FERN GREW BONES AND BABIES 


103 


You remember moss first made seeds, and then used the seeds 
to grow spores, to grow new plants. The fern turns right around. 
It grows spores first. Then it uses the spores to grow seeds to grow 
plants. You can watch it do this if you have a great deal of patience, 
and a good magnifying glass. Take a bit of fern leaf and lay it on 
a pot full of soft, rich earth. Keep the earth moist and in a dim 
light. As the fern leaf decays and the spore cases burst, you may 
see the little scattered spores swell. They are soaking up water. 
One of them is sure to crack open and show a little white tip. That 
is a plant cell. Like the yeast cell it has a thin skin, and it is filled 
with jelly protoplasm. One cell grows out of another, like a honey 
comb. The cells spread and spread, until a heart-shaped leaf is 
formed. 

The leaf lies on the ground, and it acts exactly like the leaf 
of a liver-wort. The upper side turns green, while from the lower 
side little hair-like suckers go down. Then little dots lift up their 
heads. These are cups and bottles just as on the liver-wort and 
mosses, too. In one kind of cup is a ball or egg, and in the other 
kind is the whip lash. The egg is called an ovule. It takes an 
ovule a certain time to become ripe, just as the egg in a chicken 
takes time to make a yolk and a white and to put a shell around 
it. The whips seem to know when the ovules are ripe, for they 
thrash around in the water in their cups, and finally flash across into 
the ovule cups. They cling together with a gelatin on the ovule, 
and grow together into—seed! 

The fern seed use that heart-shaped leaf grown on the ground by 
the spore for food, and begin to grow right away. They sprout just 
like all true seeds, sending cells down for roots and up for leaves 
The crown of the root is the buried stem of the plant. In the leaf 
stems the cell walls lengthen and stiffen into woody fibres. In some 
way that no one understands, the air and water pipes of the plants 
learn also to do the work of bones strong enough to support long 
feathery leaves. Besides, the fern is the first plant that grew from 
seeds. The mosses make seeds and then go back to spores to make 
new plants,' but the ferns make spores first, and then seeds to grow 
plants. After the ferns, plants had no further use for spores. 
Having learned how to make seeds they all make them directly. 
Seeds are embryo, or unborn baby plants. The fern took two steps 
forward. It made leg and arm bones, and it made seed babies. 
(See Ferns, Filicales, Seeds.) 


104 


HOW FAIRY FUNGI TURNED INTO A DANDELION 


VII. HOW FAIRY FUNGI TURNED INTO A DANDELION 

That was a great day in your family when you stood alone for 
the first time. It was just as great a thing in the plant world when 
the first fern leaf lifted on its slender stem and stood alone. Its 
little bones were still very soft and weak and tender. But see 
how long it took Mother Nature to get up to the standing alone 
stage of plant babyhood. 

Everything in nature, among plants and animals, grows slowly, 
just as a baby does. It takes a baby a year to grow strong enough 
to stand alone, sometimes. A further time is needed for baby to 
learn to walk, and twenty-one years for him to grow to a man. 
After she made a fern leaf stand entirely alone, on a very uncertain, 
wobbly stem, it took thousands of years, through many, many, slow 
changes, to make a tree, with a stiff trunk, with stout bark, many 
branches and leaves, and the perfect flower and fruit. 

In every upward step taken by plant life there is a story, just 
as interesting as the stories of the cell, the fungi, the green algae, 
the liver-worts, the mosses and the ferns. It would take a big book 
to trace all of these steps. We cannot do that here, but we can 
follow the big steps, in one short chapter, so you may always know 
in what very large class any plant you may see, belongs. 

For a long, long time, Nature just made larger and larger ferns, 
with taller and stiffer stems that were able to hold up a great number 
of leaves. At last she made tree-ferns, with tufts of leaves on the 
tops. These plants have no flowers, but bear single, naked seeds. 
Next, Nature seemed to learn to put a number of naked seeds on 
a spike or cone. There are two branches of this family, the pines 
and the palms. In many ways they are alike, but in some they are 
quite different. They both have a tall stem, made up of bundles of 
straight fibres. In the palm this trunk does not branch. In the 
pine the branching is high and scanty. Both have straight-veined 
leaves. 

You know the clusters of needle-like leaves of the pine, don’t 
you? They are not so very different from the fan-leaf of certain 
palms. There are many varieties of pines, or what we know as 
evergreens, or cone-bearing trees. There are the spruces, the hem¬ 
locks, the cedars, the cypresses, yews and firs. The giant 


SOME PRANKS OF FAIRY FUNGI 



This lady is sitting beside a “vegetable sheep”—a huge fungus of New Zealand. On 
the right is a photograph of a fungus which broke through a weak spot in an asphalt 
pavement. What is called “growth pressure” is known to reach 20 atmospheres, or 
300 pounds to the square inch. 



This curious fungus is found in the jungles of Java. It is called the “net bearer.” 
Why? The illustration on the right shows how the common fungus grows—“A” roots; 
“R" fruit- “T” how the snores are scattered. 



Here are two ways in which the fungus attacks and helps to destroy our beautiful 
trees. 









































HOW FAIRY FUNGI TURNED INTO A DANDELION 


105 


redwoods of California are cone-bearers, too. They all have straight¬ 
grained, soft wood, and bear their seeds in scaly cones. Each hard, 
woody scale of a pine cone bears a pair of naked seeds. These seeds 
are one-leafed, like a grain of corn. That is, the new plant grows 
from one side of the seed. In higher plants, like peas and beans, 
the seed split into two leaves. ■ 

The palm, in some ways, is simpler than the pine. It has less 
bark, and its stem does not branch. Its bark often seems to be 
mere bundles of loose, dry fibres left by leaves that fell as the stem 
grew upward. These leaf scales are easily stripped off, and the 
fibres are so* long and strong that they can be woven and twisted. 
They hint at true bark. The flowers of palms are borne on a fleshy 
spike at the top, between the cluster of feathery leaves. They are 
small and green, as in the pines, and do not look like flowers at all. 
The seeds of palms and pines form very much as they do in the fern, 
but the little whip-lash turns into yellow grains of pollen. The 
making of pollen was a big step forward. Pollen grains can be 
carried like dust on the wind, to more distant plants. Sometimes, 
in the desert, the pollen of date palms hover like a yellow mist over 
the trees. You can see this yellow dust in pine woods in the spring. 
It has a spicy smell. 

The pines and the palms are very useful to men. The pines 
furnish many building woods, tar, turpentine, resins and gums. The 
palms furnish food in dates, cocoanuts, sago (a starchy pith), sugar, 
oil from palm nuts and cocoanuts, dyes, gums, building material 
and fibres. In pines and palms, nature made plants of very much 
longer life than she had ever made before. Some giant red-woods 
of California are known to be hundreds of years old. The highest 
of the cone-bearers have very strong, thick bark and show rings of 
yearly growth in their wood. 

Next, nature began to cover her seeds. The seeds were still 
single leafed, and the leaves straight-veined. She began to make 
ribbon-like leaves growing at regular distances on stems. Any little 
grass plant is an example. How many ribbon-leafed plants can 
you think of? Wheat, oats, rye, rice—yes, all the cereal grains, 
from grasses to the tall, wide, banner-bladed corn stalk. Sugar cane 
belongs to this family, and your bamboo fishing pole. Water flags, 
rushes and cat-tails belong to it, too, and onions, lilies and other 
bulb plants. In the bulb plants the stems are crowded into round 
fleshy crowns that are often buried. And they bear beautiful flowers. 


106 


HOW FAIRY FUNGI TURNED INTO A DANDELION 


All these plants, too, have single-leafed seeds. Plant some 
grains of corn. After they begin to sprout pull them up, one every 
day and watch them grow. The plant sprouts from one side of the 
grain, always. The first shoot looks like a blade of grass rolled 
from one side to another. The leaf and stalk veins lie side by side 
in long straight lines. The plants have no true bark, or rings of 
growth. Most of them live only one season. Their seeds are fer¬ 
tilized by pollen carried by the wind, as in palms and pines, and like 
them are borne on stalks or spikes. A head of wheat or an ear of 
corn is something like a pine cone, but the seeds are covered and 
protected. This class of plants gives us a great variety and quantity 
of grain foods, for men and animals and birds. 

Last of all, Nature made plants with the two-leafed seeds, net- 
veined leaves, hard-wood stems that always show rings of growth, 
stiff bark, beautiful flowers and fruit. The very earliest of these 
still have wood only a little harder than pines and palms. And they 
bear their seeds on soft, feathery, or furry cones or spikes. These 
are the willows, alders and poplars with their tassel-like catkins. 
Far above these are the crown-bearers, or true flower-making plants. 
These are the orchard trees, rose bushes and strawberry vines, with 
their loose, gaily colored, fluttering petals. Their seeds are not only 
covered, they are often buried in fruit pulp, or hidden in pods and shells. 

Very likely you think the crown-bearers are the highest of all 
plants. That is because you think of them as the most useful to 
human beings. But they are not more useful than many of the 
grasses and palms. By “highest” in plants and animals, is meant 
those that are most useful to themselves. It is the first business of 
every living thing to eat and grow and reproduce itself. Those that 
can do these things best, that can live and grow under the hardest 
conditions, and that can make and scatter the greatest number and 
hardiest seed, are the highest of all. 

So, above the crown-bearers are the funnel flowering plants of 
the morning-glory and clover. And above them are the composite 
flowers that live, great numbers of them, packed and crowded 
into one flower head, like people in a city. These are the daisy, 
the sunflower, the chrysanthemum, the aster, the purple-headed 
thistle, the — guess! A little flower with a gold crown on his head— 
the common yellow dandelion! 

If you don’t believe it open a dandelion head in full flower. 
Split the green cup down one side and spread the head open. See 


HOW FAIRY FUNGI TURNED INTO A DANDELION 


107 


the tiny stems crowded in that cup, like flowers in a vase. Every 
yellow petal is a funnel that is folded around little seed-making 
hairs and knobs, powdered with yellow pollen grains. Try to count 
the ripe seeds on a gray, gauzy globe of dandelion. Watch them 
fly and scatter in the air. The seeds are not only well covered, but 
they have feather wings. You know how hard it is to kill dande¬ 
lions out of grass. If you cut off the tops, new tufts of leaves spring 
up. If you dig out the roots some rootlets or root-tips remain 
to start new plants. And every flower head grows and scatters 
dozens of seeds. The thistles are just as bad. This family gives us. 
some beautiful flowers, some plants that are useful, but a great many 
that are troublesome weeds, that we have to rout out year after 
year. Of all the plants those that bear composite flowers make the 
best fight for life, and win out under the hardest conditions. So 
they are the highest. 

So you see how the single yeast-cell, that is born, grows to full 
size, sprouts a new bud and dies in a moment of time, has developed 
into the hundred-flowered, tough and stubborn, yellow dandelion. 
See Gymnosperms, Conifers, Palm, Datepalm, Grass, Wheat, 
Oats, Rye, Rice, Barley, Corn, Plate of Cereal Grains, Volume 
III, page 1650, Bamboo, sketch of Filipino in “Travel Stories” for 
uses of bamboo, Lily and other bulb plants, Monocotyledons 
(single-leafed seed), Dicotyledons (two-leafed seed), Compositae, 
Dandelion, Thistle, etc. 


108 


WHY PLANTS ARE LIKE SQUIRRELS 


VIII. WHY PLANTS ARE LIKE SQUIRRELS 

Did you ever see a squirrel gathering acorns and nuts in the 
autumn? All summer long squirrels eat their food as they find it, 
bring up their babies, grow fat themselves and play a great deal. 
But when the first frost sends the nuts rattling to the ground, they 
know winter is coming. So they lay away a good store of food, 
.in some safe place, to last them through “hard times.” Wise 
little brother of the tree tops! How busy he is, and how hard he 
w r orks! 

Plants are just like squirrels. They eat and grow all summer, 
feed their flower babies until they are ripe seeds, then they store 
food to last them until the Spring. It is not so easy to catch plants 
at work, as it is to catch squirrels, but if you have very sharp eyes 
and minds you can do it. All plants above the fungi, earn their 
own living. In all green plants the roots get food from the earth, 
and the leaves get food from the air. The two kinds of food come 
together in the leaves, and the sun mixes and changes them into 
plant cells. 

In the story about water you learned that water never runs 
up hill. Then how does water get from far down in the ground to 
the top of a tree? It doesn’t run up; it is pumped up. Get a basin 
of water. Hold your handkerchief so just the hem on one side of 
it is in the water. That becomes wet at once. Hold it there. See 
the water climb, thread by thread! In a little while the handker¬ 
chief is wet to the top. You know a wet piece of cloth dries rapidly 
in the sun. As the water in the handkerchief passes into the air 
as vapor, more water is drawn from the basin. After awhile it is 
all soaked up. The basin is empty, and soon afterwards the handker¬ 
chief is dry. 

This drawing of water up by threads, is called capillary 
attraction. A lump of sugar has it. Hold a lump of sugar 
with one tiny corner of it just touching the top of a cup of coffee. 
Soon the whole lump is brown and wet. A plant is like a 
big handkerchief full of threads that run from the root hairs 
to the leaves. The sun draws the water, in vapor, from the 
leaves, and more water is pulled up just as long as the roots 
can find any in the earth. Those little wood-fibers that you 


WHY PLANTS ARE LIKE SQUIRRELS 


109 


found in bundles in the stems of fern leaves, are not only bones, 
they are blood vessels, too. 

Those little tubes are so small that they cannot carry anything 
but liquid food. The sap of trees looks like clear water, but it has 
a great many things melted in it. The sap of maple trees has sugar. 
Some saps are puckery, some spicy. In the earth are many things 
that melt in water. Water will take up and hold, salt, sugar, lime, 
iron and many minerals. When clear well water is boiled in a tea¬ 
kettle, it coats the inside of the kettle with lime. If you melt salt 
in water and then put it in the sun, the water will pass away as 
vapor, but the salt will be left in the glass. 

Minerals will not burn. If you burn wood you have a little 
heap of ashes left. The ashes are the minerals that were in the 
wood. Plants do not like rain-water as they do well-water. They 
must have water that has gone down into the earth and taken up 
minerals. That is the reason why plants are so made that they get 
all their water through the roots. 

You might think that plants drink the rain that falls on their 
leaves and stems. They don’t. They merely use rain to wash their 
faces. They need to wash the dust out of their skin pores, just as 
you do. Ask them if this is not true. Leaves will talk, as they 
are supposed to do in fairy stories, if you know their language. This 
is one way to ask leaves if they drink through their leaf-pores, or 
through their roots. 

Take a leafy branch. Lay it across the mouth of a jar of water, 
so some of the leaves dip into the water. In another jar put the 
stems of leaves in the water. These stay fresh several days, and 
drink the water, as you can see by the smaller amount in the jar. 
The others soon wilt and wither, and do not use the water in the jar. 

The work of the leaves is to do the air-breathing for the plants. 
They do it just as you do, through lungs. Their lungs are more 
like the pores of your skin. There are little open mouths at the 
ends and crossings of the little tubes that come up from the roots. 
In net-veined leaves, like the rose and apple, they are scattered 
over the under surface. They open little mouths, breathe out the 
vapor of the water from the roots, and breathe in the air. 

The leaves are little plant-food factories. In them they have 
water and minerals from the roots, and oxygen, nitrogen and carbon- 
dioxide from the air. Oxygen is a purifier. We use oxygen to 
purify the blood in our lungs. Carbon is the wood-fiber maker. It 


110 


WHY PLANTS ARE LIKE SQUIRRELS 


is that solid part of a plant that makes a bright fire. Coal is nearly 
all carbon, and coal you know was made of plants pressed to a kind 
of stone. Nitrogen is a plant food. The roots get some of it out 
of the earth, and the leaves get some out of the air. Nitrogen is 
what is left when the oxygen is burned out of the air. (See Air.) 

A leaf is very thin. The sun can shine right through it, for 
the cell walls or skin is as transparent as glass. In some way sun¬ 
light mixes with the water and minerals from the roots and the 
oxygen, from the air, and makes green plant cells. The clear, unused 
part of the water is drawn away in vapor, and most of the oxygen 
is given back to the air for animals to breathe. The carbon is laid 
away in the plant cells. The nitrogen is sent clear back to the 
roots to make nitrates, before the plant can use it. Clover draws 
a great deal of nitrogen from the air, to make this plant food. 

The new plant food made in the leaves is sent back to all the 
growing parts of the plant where it is needed. Some of it stays in 
the leaves to build them larger. Some goes into flowers, fruit and 
seeds. In grasses and straight-veined plants without bark, the new 
plant food goes to every part. But in plants that grow by adding 
a new ring every year, the green cells form a layer between the old 
wood and the bark. 

You can find this soft, green layer under the bark of a rose bush, 
or the twdg of an orchard or nut tree, in the spring. It loosens the 
bark so it can easily be peeled off. That is why you can make a 
willow whistle in the spring, or peel a little switch. The new green 
layer makes the heart wood just that much larger, so the bark has 
to stretch to fit it. You know your skin stretches as you grow larger 
or become fatter, doesn’t it? Maybe this stretching, year after year, 
is what makes the bark on hard wood trees crack in long deep ridges. 

All summer a plant is busy feeding itself, growing and bringing 
up seed babies. But in the fall the leaves close their mouths and 
stop pulling up water. They know hard times are coming, when 
there will be little water to draw upon. So they must stop giving 
water to the air. They seem to rob themselves of the food they no 
longer need, and to send it all into ripening seeds, into the roots, 
and into next year’s leaf-buds that form at the base of the leaf stalks. 
Food for the seeds, when they begin to grow, is stored in fruits and 
nuts, into thickened stems like lily bulbs, into tubers like potatoes, 
and into grains of corn and wheat. Everything is done to keep the 
plant alive over the winter, and to give it a new start in the spring. 


WHY PLANTS ARE LIKE SQUIRRELS 


111 


When you see bare, leafless trees blowing in the winter gale, 
and often loaded with snow, they look dead. But they are only 
asleep, like the squirrel and the bee, with their food safely stored 
away. On any bit of twig you can find little brown knobs and points, 
often smaller than wheat seeds. They are next year’s leaf and 
branch and flower buds. They are rolled tight and wrapped in fur 
and spicy gums, to keep out the cold and water. In the first warm 
days, in February or March, these buds swell. If you break off 
some twigs of willow or lilac, and put them in a jar of water in a 
sunny window, you can watch them burst into green leaves and 
branches and flower buds. 

Like the squirrel, the plant stores its food for winter, and it 
pops out of its hole and goes to work again, just as soon as earth and 
air and sunshine say: 

“Wake up, children, spring is here.” 

And some trees, like the willow, alder and poplar, even whisk 
their saucy little catkin tails in the air, just like squirrels. 


112 


PLANTS HAVE VISITORS AND TRAVEL ABROAD 


IX. PLANTS HAVE VISITORS AND TRAVEL ABROAD 

What a great thing it is for little boys and girls to have 
play mates. How many more things you learn to know and 
to do, and how much better a time you have, if you play 
with others. It is best of all to have some one who has lived in a 
very different place, and in a very different way from yourself, to 
play with. 

Do you live in the country ? And have you some little cousins 
who live in a city ? Very likely they visit you in the summer. What 
a treat it is to them. A farm is a strange, delightful land to a city 
boy. How many wonders he sees, and how eager you are to explain 
them to him. Then you go to the city to visit, and you see enough 
new things to talk about for weeks. It is a good thing to go away 
from home, and to have visitors. Moving about and mixing with 
people brightens us all wonderfully, and makes us change some of 
our ways of thinking and living. 

It is just the same with plants. Plants that live by themselves, 
and do everything for themselves, are like hermits in caves. The 
liver-worts, mosses and ferns are sort of hermit plants. Palms and 
pines and grasses travel a little. Their pollen grains take journeys 
on the wind, and visit other plants. They begin to change then. 
There are thousands of varieties of the higher plants. 

As plants cannot run about to make new acquaintances, like 
little boys and girls, they need messenger boys to carry letters. They 
use the wind, the bees, the butterflies and the birds. By these winged 
messengers they exchange gifts with their friends and neighbors and 
relatives in distant fields, just as we exchange gifts at Christmas. 
Let us see just how they do it. 

You have often noticed the grains of yellow powder on little 
upright threads in the hearts of flowers, haven’t you? They are 
very plain in roses, in the blossoms of fruit trees and buttercups, 
and many common flowers. Perhaps some one has brushed a butter¬ 
cup under your chin to see if you like butter. If you do that yellow 
dust rubs off on your chin. It is so loosely fastened, in some flowers, 
that you can blow it off. That yellow dust is pollen. Pollen is 
one of the things the plant needs to make seed. The other thing 
is an egg. 


DO PLANTS HAVE “FEELINGS” TOO? 

A/ - OU know flow your legs kick when someone tickles your feet. So 
-*■ all living things, including plants, respond to touch, but some, like 
the sensitive plant, show their “feelings” more than others. Chloro¬ 
form has the same effect on plants it has on people—after taking it 
they stop “showing their feelings.” Some plants get food by closing 
their leaves on insects that touch them. In the circle is a leaf of a big 
pitcher plant that grows in California and catches insects in its pitchers. 
Notice the flange that guides the insect into the pitcher. 




This man is chloroforming a sensitive plant. On the left is the Trumpet Leaf_a 

plant that catches ants—and on the right the Huntsman’s Cup, that “eats” cockroaches. 



The Venus fly trap has leaves like jaws that snap up insects touching them. On the 
right is another kind of pitcher plant. The picture shows how its "pitchers full of 
sweetened water are kept open to attract insects. (See Sensitive Plants and Car¬ 
nivorous Plants.) 




























PLANTS HAVE VISITORS AND TRAVEL ABROAD 


113 


Do you remember the little balls and whip lashes in liver-worts, 
and the way in which the whip thrashed about in its bath cup and 
jumped to the ball? By the time plants grew into pines and palms 
and grasses, the whip lash turned to pollen grains, but the little ball 
remained much the same. It became an egg, packed away with 
others in a seed-case. 

The egg always lies quietly in its case. Cut a ripe apple across 
the middle and see what a nice seed case it has. The egg has to 
stay where it is formed, and wait for the pollen to come to it. In 
the apple blossom there is a circle of pink petals. Those petals are 
not the flower at all. They are only the party dress the flower puts 
on for company. The real flower is in the center of the pink petals. 
In the very middle is a tiny white column, that swells out at the 
top into a spongy, moist button like a little dog’s wet nose. This 
button often glistens as if it had a dew-drop on it. The column 
goes down to a knob hidden in a green cup, below the pink petals, 
and swelling out from the stem. In this knob are the eggs in a 
nest. By and by the pink petals will fall off, and the green knob 
will swell and grow and ripen into a juicy apple. 

That is, it will do so if something happens in blossom time. 
The little column that rises from the seed case, and that has a spongy 
wet button on the tip, is hollow. It has a fairy tunnel in it. All 
around the column is a ring-around-a-rosy of little white hairs, with 
the yellow pollen grains on them. Those grains are so loosely set 
that a baby breeze fluttering the pink petals against them, or a blun¬ 
dering bee or butterfly in search of honey, brushes them off. Some 
of the pollen is sure to be brushed onto that little button in the 
middle when—down they go! The yellow dust sends a tiny rootlet 
on a toboggan slide down that tunnel, right into the eggs. When 
the two unite, they form a seed. 

If that was all there was to it, it would be very simple. Every 
plant could make its own seeds, and wouldn’t need any neighbors 
or relations to help it. But sometimes flowers have the eggs but 
no pollen. You can find a great many strawberry blossoms with 
the little button-topped column, but no yellow food for the eggs at 
the bottom of the tunnel. These imperfect flowers must always be 
planted among perfect flowered kinds of strawberries. 

And sometimes, even when flowers have both of the seed making 
materials, they cannot unite them. The egg wants pollen from some 
other plant. It doesn’t want the help of its brother in making seed, 


114 


PLANTS HAVE VISITORS AND TRAVEL ABROAD 


but of its cousin. A Bartlett pear wants pollen from another variety 
of pear altogether. Fruit growers know this and plant different 
kinds of pear trees in an orchard. If not too distant, the pollen 
will find the eggs that need it. 

So, in blossom time, there is a great deal of blowing about and 
visiting and exchanging of gifts between flowers. They seem to be 
amusing themselves; tossing their pretty locks, swinging their silken 
petticoats in the breeze, and gossiping with bees and butterflies 
about what is going on in neighboring fields and orchards. One can 
fancy a little sugar pear tree saying to a bumble bee: “ Put some of my 

nice yellow pollen on your legs and take it over to 
Mrs. Bartlett, with my compliments. I’m sure it’s 
what she needs for her little seed babies. Just 
press the button and she’ll do the rest.” 

Isn’t that friendly? The plant world is very busy 
and helpful when it seems to be playing. The tall, 
plumy tassels at the tops of corn stalks, swing 
much as you do under the maple tree. But those 
tassels are so loaded with pollen that you can often 
see a brown dust hovering over a corn field. As 
the wind blows the tassels, the pollen is shaken 
down in clouds. It falls on the corn silks below. 
Each one of those silks goes back to little eggs 
on the baby cob. A pollen grain must fall on the 
hollow tip of each silk, and slide a hair root down 
the long tube to the egg, or there would be no 
kernels, or seeds, on the ear of corn. 

The wind is the only messenger of the pines 
and palms, the grasses and grains, and many of 
the straight-veined plants. The lilies and other 
bulb plants of the straight-veined family, have bee and insect visitors. 
Nearly all of the net-veined plants have such sweet blossoms and 
fruits that bees and butterflies visit them. When fruits and seeds are 
ripe the winds blow them abroad, the birds eat them, fly far away, 
north arid south, sometimes hundreds of miles, and plant the seeds 
in other countries. In this way plants were scattered long before 
men began to grow them for food. The soil and rain and sunshine 
were not always the same, so plants had to change. Many varieties 
of palms and pines, grasses and wild fruits were made. The plants that 
traveled and had the greatest number of visitors, changed the most. 



CORN PLANT 

From the tassels at 
the top of the stalk 
the pollen falls on 
the silk at the end of 
the ears which are 
sprouting below. 


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WHY “JACK” GETS HIS FACE WASHED 


\V HEN a bee pokes 
her nose into an al¬ 
falfa blossom she trips 
the stamen, which jumps 
up like a jack-in-the- 
box and scatters pollen 
on her breast; this she 
rubs against the sticky 
end of the pistil of 
this and other alfalfa 
blossoms and so fertilizes 
them. To produce new 



varieties, Uncle Sam’s 
experts do this tripping 
with a pin and wash off 
the pollen with a rubber 
bulb such as dentists use, 
so the flower cannot fer¬ 
tilize itself. Then pollen 
is applied from the flower 
of the plant with which 
'the crossing is to be 
made. 



A and B, before and after tripping; C, held by pin; D, after washing; E, after pollin- 
ization; F, pin removed. Picture No. 2 shows how the sweet pea (A) is crossed by the 
removal of stamens (BC) ; D, after fertilizing; E, second morning; F. third morning. 



Lettuce flower pollen can be removed with a small rubber tube attached to the garden 
hose Such flowers as the single rose are easily crossed by the water method or by 
removing stamens (Sta.) and applying pollen to the pistil (P). 


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HOW PLANTS ARE PROMOTED TO A HIGHER CLASS 


115 


X. HOW PLANTS ARE PROMOTED TO A HIGHER CLASS 

A long time ago people thought that flowers were given their 
beautiful colors and perfumes just to make the world a pleasanter 
place for people to live in. But now we know that everything lives 
for itself. It lives to eat and grow and make seeds of its own kind. 
No doubt, flowers have found out that men and women and little 
girls and boys are very good friends in helping them grow. They 
want all the help they can get, so they put on pretty dresses, and 
use perfumes to coax bees and butterflies to visit them, and they 
offer cups of honey to their little brothers of the air, so they will 
come back again. 

When we see a flower it seems to have got so far away from the 
little cell full of protoplasm, or magic jelly, that we cannot under¬ 
stand that they can be made of the same things at all. But the 
little cell has the same power that the most beautiful flower has. 
It can take lifeless matter out of the air and water, and make 
living things out of it. And it can change. Lifted into the sun¬ 
light some of its cells turned green. Thrown out on the land, the 
cells clung and spread into a leaf and sent down rootlets. As the 
cells could no longer break away and float to start new families, it 
grew spores and used the wind to scatter them. 

Plants changed first by dividing the cells, then by budding new 
ones, then by uniting different kinds of cells to make spores. In 
doing these things it learned to break up air and water and put them 
together in new ways. It learned to divide the work of the plant 
by making organs—roots, stems, leaves, blossoms, fruits. The lowest 
plant is a cell, but the highest is only a multitude of cells made of 
the one material—protoplasm, but changed into many forms and 
given many kinds of work to do. From using water alone to float 
in, the plant learned to use earth, air, wind, insects, birds and men, 
to help it make and scatter its seeds, and to grow better plants. 

When you go into the fields and woods in the spring to gather 
wild flowers, haven’t you found some blossoms larger, more perfectly 
colored and with a sweeter perfume than others? No two violets 
are just alike. Some are small and pale, others large and blue and 
fragrant. In the plant world it has always been like that. And the 
stronger plants always have the best chance to live. They have 


116 


HOW PLANTS ARE PROMOTED TO A HIGHER CLASS 


better soil, or more room to grow in, or more sunshine or, something 
that makes them better than their brothers and sisters. So they 
have a chance to make better seeds. The weak plants die more 
easily. This is nature’s way of picking out the best. 

Among the flowers there w^ere some born with deeper little 
pockets, so the insects could not get at the honey without covering 
themselves with pollen. So these flowers kept more of their honey 
for their own use, and made the bees and butterflies scatter their 
pollen. The kind of flowers that spread their honey, or that had 
pockets that were easily “picked,” died. The flowers that have the 
stronger perfume have a better chance, too, and those that have 
attractive colors. 

Suppose a bee goes after honey in an apple blossom. It likes 
the color and the smell. So it goes to another apple blossom and 
another. It doesn’t visit anything but apple blossoms until it goes 
back to the hive. Just why it does this we do not know, but very 
likely bees and butterflies are much like little boys and girls. When 
they get a taste of anything good, they like to make a meal of it. 
Once a little girl was asked why she didn’t eat bread with her jelly. 
She thought a moment and then said, soberly: 

“The delly is dooder. ” 

Maybe that is all the answer the bee could make. For the time 
it has the color and smell and taste of apple blossoms, and that 
seems “dooder.” The next time it comes it may blunder into a 
head of clover. Then nothing but clover will satisfy it. In this 
way insects are kept from mixing the pollens of different plants. The 
traps and tricks that flowers have learned, to make the insects scatter 
their pollen, is interesting. Some have hair nets over the honey cups 
to hold the little visitor until, in his struggles, he rubs the pollen 
from his legs, onto the little wet buttons on the seed tube. Then 
they give him a little honey and let him fly away. 

You didn’t know, perhaps, that some flowers are so much better 
than others of the same kind that they really are a little different. 
You know it is like that in human families. Lincoln was better than 
and different from all his own people and his neighbors. So was the 
poet Shakspere, and the poet Burns, and Daniel Webster and Wash¬ 
ington. Men who have studied plants find some with a genius for 
going up higher. 

One day a man like this was walking in a field of yellow poppies, 
in California. Yellow poppies grow wild there. There were acres and 


HOW PLANTS ARE PROMOTED TO A HIGHER CLASS 


117 


acres of these poppies, as yellow as gold. Suddenly he saw one 
blossom that had red stripes on its petals. He tied a label on the 
stalk so he could find it again, and left it there for the seed to ripen. 
He gathered these seed and planted them in his garden near some 
red poppies. When the two blossomed he took the pollen from the 
red poppy on a camel’s hair artist’s brush and, as lightly as a butter¬ 
fly, put it on the seed button of the striped blossom. The seed from 
that, the next year, grew into big, crimson flowers. 

The name of this plant wizard is Mr. Luther Burbank. He has 
made big, snow-white, double-petaled Shasta daisies from the common 
field daisy. He has grown white blackberries, and stoneless plums, 
and thornless cactus that cattle can feed on in the desert, and many 
other plants. If you ask him how he does it he will say, modestly, 
that he finds a plant that wants to come up higher, and he helps 
it a little, just as a rich man or a church will sometimes send a very 
bright, ambitious boy to college. 

Farmers help plants come up higher, and get better and different 
varieties of seeds all the time. They plant the largest seeds from 
the biggest, fullest ears of corn, and the best filled stalks of wheat. 
They take the smoothest, mealiest potatoes with the healthiest eyes. 
And they change the crops grown on a field. Wheat and cotton and 
certain other crops use up the plant food in the soil, if they are 
grown year after year in the same fields. So clover is planted to 
make nitrates for the soil. Flowers really do want us to look at them 
and smell them, just as they want the wind to blow on them, the 
bees and butterflies to visit them, and men and birds to eat their 
fruits. If we love them and find them useful to us, we help them 
grow and change. 

The old, old call of “come up higher” is still sounded in the 
woods and fields. Older people can remember the first navel oranges 
without seeds, and the big Burbank potatoes. Every flower show 
has some new and more beautiful rose or chrysanthemum; every new 
spring seed catalogue its new colorings of sweet peas and nasturtiums. 
Any little boy or girl with a tiny garden, can watch for some flower 
with a poet’s gift for size, color or perfume, and help it “come up 
higher.” 


PART II—ANIMALS 


I. THE LITTLE ANIMAL THAT WALKS WITH ITS STOMACH 

AND EATS WITH ITS FEET 

Don’t you like the menagerie part of the circus best? And the 
“Zoo” in the city park? Wild animals are so strange and interesting. 
In every pond and creek there are animals that are just as strange. 
You don’t have to buy a ticket to see them, as you do for a circus. 
But you can see a great many more of them, and all of them a great 
deal better, if you have a good microscope. Some of these little 
animals are wonderfully small, as well as wonderfully made. 

The lowest forms of animal life, as of vegetable life, live in the 
water. The very, very smallest animal is just a single cell, too small 
for you to see without a magnifying glass. The yeast plant, you 



AN AMOEBA FEEDING 

In first figure a bit of food lies near it, in second figure it draws near the food, next it 

stretches around it and then it swallows it. 



last two figures show the amoeba dividing so as to make two. 

know, is alike all over, and gets its food by “soaking it in through 
its skin.” 


118 



















WALKS WITH ITS STOMACH AND EATS WITH ITS FEET 


119 


One of these single-celled animals is called the amoeba. That 
is a Greek word that means “change.” The amoeba can change its 
shape whenever it wants to. If you could put on a pair of wings 
as easily as the amoeba can make feet, you could do what every boy 
has wanted to do—fly like a bird. Whenever the amoeba wants to 
move in a certain direction, little legs push out from that side of 
its body and draw the rest of the amoeba after it. Whenever it 
wants to go in another direction it draws in these legs and makes 
legs on the other side. 

But when it wants to eat it doesn’t make a mouth, and put food 
in this mouth, as you might suppose. Whenever it touches the 
food on which it lives, it simply wraps itself around it like a little 
boy trying to carry a big watermelon. 

It looked very odd to see the hair-like growths of the flower 
cup close around the bee and make it give up as much of the pollen 
on its legs as the plant wants, before letting go. It looked as if even 
flowers could think sometimes. So the little amoeba acts as if it 
could think, too. It seems to have ideas and tastes just as we have. 
Not so many ideas, and not so many tastes; but you would hardly 
expect that of an amoeba, would you? An amoeba is thousands 
and thousands of times smaller than we are—hardly a hundredth 
of an inch across its little body. Just think what might happen, if 
we were as many times brighter than an amoeba as we are times 
larger! 

For see what it does: 

If it wraps itself around a piece of food that is too big for it— 
if it “finds its eyes are bigger than its stomach” as little boys do 
sometimes—it just unwraps itself from the food and glides away. 
Sometimes it seems not to like the taste of things, for, having wrapped 
itself around something, it holds it awhile and then lets go of it again 
without eating it. Some of the little animals it eats have shells. 
When it is through with one of these it unwraps itself and drops 
the shell. 

And it seems to have nerves, too. Of course we can’t tickle 
its feet because it hasn’t any except those that it makes when it 
wants to go walking. But if you touch it, or shake it, it pulls all 
of itself in, making itself into a little round drop of jelly. 

You have often noticed how an earth-worm, or fishing-worm, 
as you call it, will shrink when you touch it. This shows that the 
earth-worm has “feelings,” too. It has something that answers 


120 WALKS WITH ITS STOMACH AND EATS WITH ITS FEET 

for nerves. We couldn’t get along very well without nerves because 
it is through them that we know what is going on around us. Nerves 
are just as necessary to make things go right inside of us. It is by 
means of the nerves of the eye that we see, the nerves of the ear 
that we hear, the nerves of the tongue that we taste. 

As the cells of plants change into roots or leaves or bark, when 
leaves or roots or bark are needed, so all the different parts of animals, 
from the amoeba up to man, have been made to grow by the work 
they have to do. The amoeba uses all parts of itself for the same 
purposes. There is no part that always does the walking—so it has 
no legs or feet. The legs and feet which the amoeba makes, as it 
wants them, are called “false feet.” It has no stomach that always 
stays a stomach, because there is no part that it always uses to digest 
its food. 

There is a little animal called the “moneron” which is still 
lower in the scale of life than the amoeba. For one thing it hasn’t 
any skin—this moneron. Inside and outside it is just the same. 
The amoeba has a kind of a skin on the outside, and a little hollow 
place on the inside, which serves both as a heart and lungs, dis¬ 
tributing the food and oxygen from the water throughout its body. 
The oxygen which it needs comes out of the air just as does the 
oxygen which we need. You know there is air in the water. 

Next above the amoeba are little animals called in-fu-sor'ia. 
These, under the microscope, look like caps or bells, with little hairs 
all around them. They remind us of the little whips that help to 
make the spores in the liver-wort, as if to say that plants and animals 
are related. These infusoria go thrashing around in the water just 
as the whip-tailed cells of the liver-wort do, using the hairs to swim 
with, just as the liver-wort cells uses these whips. These little hairs 
stay little hairs, and are not drawn back and changed into some¬ 
thing else, as are the feet of the amoeba. 

Still higher up are other little animals that look something like 
these, but in addition to having these little hairs to swim with, they 
have mouths that stay mouths all the time. In these little animals 
part of the hairs are used like oars to swim with, and those around 
the mouth are used as hands, fanning other little animals into the 
mouth. 

Now don’t you believe that, in a pool of standing water, there 
are just as wonderful animals as in a circus? And don’t you see, 
also, that in the animal kingdom, nature begins spelling out her 


WALKS WITH ITS STOMACH AND EATS WITH ITS FEET 


121 


wonderful story, in little easy words of one syllable, just as you 
learned to read when you began with the primer: 

“It is a c-a-t.” 

Only, when we read the Book of Nature we can’t begin with 
the cat; she’s away up in a higher grade, with the fish and the birds 
and boys and girls. She has a backbone; and these little animals 
in the pond menagerie haven’t any bones at all! 

Your big brother or sister who goes to high school, can tell you 
more about the amoeba and other simple forms of life. Or, if you 
have a very fine microscope, he can show them to you. You may 
find amoeba on the dead leaves in the bottom of pools, or in the 
home or school aquarium, or on the roots of duck weed and other 
small water plants. You can also put some hay or straw in a glass 
jar filled with water, let it stand a few days in a warm room, and 
get specimens of another kind of one-celled animals. Then you can 
watch them through the microscope. See Amoeba, page 64; Biology, 
page 212; Protoplasm, page 1554; Protozoa, page 1554; Infusoria, 

page 925. 

% 


122 


WATER BABIES THAT LIVE IN A VILLAGE 


II. WATER BABIES THAT LIVE IN A VILLAGE 

If the amoeba is ever to get up in the world very far, it must 
stop using all its parts for everything. The first little creature to 
make a stomach on the inside, you know very well. Or, rather, 
you know his empty house. A sponge is the skeleton, or bony 
house,, where hundreds and hundreds of little animals once lived. 
They all live together so they can help float food to each other’s 
mouths. You know a sponge is full of holes. These holes are long, 
crooked water streets of the bony town. Other sponge colonies live 
in glass towns. Those are very beautiful. 

Bath sponges are a kind of elastic horn. Elastic means that 
it will stretch, like rubber. When you fill a sponge with water and 
squeeze it out, you make it do over again, in a way, what it does 
when every room in it has living baby tenants. The sponge lives 
by having water flow through its village. But, instead of soaking 
up the water and squeezing it out, the water is paddled through the 
little streets, by little hair-like arms. 

The sponge is the lowest animal that is made of more than one 
cell. The sponge has a stomach on the inside and bones on the 
outside. By living, a great many of them, in one house or village, 
like those old cliff-dwellers, all the little sponges get along better. 
They live very close neighbors, all work for each other, buy their 
food of the same grocer, and pay for it in a lump. Their house is 
a kind of fort, too. Larger water animals could “gobble up” millions 
of separate little sponges, but a whole village of them, in a horny 
house, is too big and tough a bite. It’s a great thing to be sociable, 
to make friends and live in peace with neighbors. That makes life 
easier and pleasanter for boys and girls, bees and sponges. 

The holes in the sponge are little mouths that lead into the 
village. Inside of it, -when the sponge is alive, there are little one- 
room houses, and in these are packed, side by side, little jelly-like 
cells with tails. These tails stick out into the water and, like little 
fishermen, catch smaller plants and animals out of the water, as it 
passes through the sponge. At the same time these tails, or fishing 
poles, catch the water as it flows through the channels. The water 
also carries air, and the sponge gets its oxygen out of it. You see, 
the sponge like the fish, must breathe under water. 


WATER BABIES THAT LIVE IN A VILLAGE 


123 



While the sponge is like an animal, in eating other little animals 
and plants, it is like a vegetable in that it cannot move around. It 
is rooted to one spot. The sponges grow so thickly that they often 
make perfect forests on the rocks, on the bottom of the sea. When 
the sponge is taken from the water it is covered with what seems 
to be a mass of jelly. This 
is its flesh, and the flesh is 
made up of the little cells 
with tails that I have been 
telling you about. 

Just as if you might 
forget—although it seems 
so plain—that this sponge 
is made up of little creatures 
like the infusoria, and has 
become a higher order of 
animal because all these 
little animals formed into 
a society and worked 
together, the sponges 
increase by laying eggs; 
one-celled eggs. These eggs 
first turn into simple little 
animals with paddles all 
around them, like the infu¬ 
soria, and they swim around 
by themselves, for awhile, 
before a number of them 
settle down together to form 
a sponge. They are like 
boys that go out into the 
world awhile to learn what 
it is like, and then join 
other boys and go into business together. 

As we go along you will find nature continually “saying her 
piece” over again, from the beginning, as if to be sure she gets it 
right. And, also, I think, she may do it to be sure that we catch 
the idea of what w r onderful things all of us can do in this world, if 
we will do each little thing, build each little thing, as well as we can, 
and keep looking upward as we build. 


A sponge as it appears attached to the ocean 
bed. The little animals inside the horny skele¬ 
ton stick hairly-like tails out into the water 
to catch their food. 




124 


WATER BABIES THAT LIVE IN A VILLAGE 


It is as if nature said, after studying the yeast plant: “This 
yeast plant will make something better if it can get out into the 
world.” So she took the same sort of little cells out where they 
could meet the air and the sun, and there came the liver-wort, part 
leaf and part root, and the first plant to find out how to make spores. 
Next came the mosses which began to stand up; and then the ferns 
which gave the vegetable world its backbone. Last of all came the 
flower-bearing plants, and with it the great partnership between the 
animal and the vegetable world, each helping the other to live. 

But to do all her wonderful work Nature, like you and me, had 
to work with two hands. While with one hand she was helping the 
vegetables to get up high enough to receive the help of the animal 
world, in getting still higher; she had to teach the amoeba how to 
grow into birds and butterflies and men, so that they could come 
into this grand plan of things, and make more and more beautiful 
and useful varieties of animal and vegetable life. 

Now, her work with her right hand, in growing the wonderful 
varieties of animals from the shapeless, formless amoeba, has got 
along as far as the sponges, which already have mouths and “hands” 
and the beginnings of bones, and a hollow inside. 

Not only have sponges so many more useful and interesting 
parts than the amoeba, but they show, again, how fast you can 
make differences when you have more than one part to multiply 
with. Sponges have many different shapes, different colors, and 
they live in many different kinds of places. One kind of sponge is 
called the finger sponge, because it has fingers like the human hand. 
Another is shaped like a banana. Others are almost as round as a 
ball. Some look like a flat red mat, spread over the rocks under 
the water, as if for the entrance to the doorway to some palace of 
the water fairies. Some are black, some yellow, some brown. 

One kind of sponge looks like a beautiful vase of spun glass, 
and when these sponges were first brought to Europe, from their 
home in the South Pacific, they were not thought to be sponges at 
all, but vases made by very skillful workers in glass. They were 
known as “Venus’ Flower Baskets.” 

The sponge itself is not only made up of other little animals 
living together, and getting food for one another, but other animals, 
of a higher order, are often found living in the cosy sponge village. 
In the larger sponges are found shrimps, crabs and even fishes. 
See Sponges, page 1801. 




DO YOU WONDER IT WAS MISTAKEN FOR SPUN GLASS? 

“One kind of sponge looks like a beautiful vase of spun glass. When first brought 
to Europe they were not thought to be sponges at all, but vases made by very skill¬ 
ful workers in glass.” 


FROM SEA BOTTOM 

Below, on the left, a 
Greek sponge gatherer 
is going down in a div¬ 
ing suit off the Florida 
coast. After being 
gathered, sponges are 
put into those wicker 


TO THE MARKET 

pens where the tide 
washes them, but can¬ 
not wash them away. 
Below, to the right, is 
a sponge market where 
the sponges are graded 
and offered for sale. 


FARMING UNDER THE SEA 


THESE 
TWO MEN 
ARE GOING 
OVER THE 
HARVEST 
FIELDS 


THE \ 
SPONGE \ 
FISHER’S \ 
FORK , 


HOW THE SPONGE CROP 
IS HARVESTED 


“When the vessel 
reaches the grounds, 
the men go out in 
pairs in row boats, 
one man leaning over 
and scanning the sea 
bottom with a water 
glass. When a 
sponge is seen, it is 
secured with a kind 
of steel fork on a 
long slender pole.”— 
The New Student’s 
Reference Work. 


THE 

SPONGE 

FARMER 

























EATS WITH ITS PETALS AND MOVES WHEN IT WANTS TO 


125 


III. A SEA FLOWER THAT EATS WITH ITS PETALS AND 

MOVES WHEN IT WANTS TO 

The sponge, the jelly fish and the coral builder are hollow-bodied 
animals. They are higher than the amoeba because they have more 
different parts. The locomotive is a higher order of machine for 
moving things than baby brother’s go-cart. So, the sea-anemone is 
higher than the sponge. It is very puzzling, but you like to study 
puzzles and find the answers, don’t you? 

Here’s puzzle number one: Does the sea-anemone look most 
like an animal or a vegetable? You will see from the picture that 
the answer is very easy. But— 

Why does it look so much like a vegetable? Well, why do your 
own lungs, that you breathe with, look like a vegetable? 

Your lungs are shaped a good deal like a tree with trunk, limbs 
and branches; and, we might almost say, twigs and leaves. The 
lungs are spread out in this way to get the oxygen from the air that 
you breathe. The lungs digest air as your stomach digests its food. 
Because the air is not so solid as the food your stomach digests, it 
takes a good deal more of it for the lungs to get the amount of oxygen 
you need. So they are spread out to catch as much of this oxygen 
as possible every time you breathe. Leaves are the lungs of the 
plant. There must be a great many of them, and they must spread 
out to take in enough air and sunshine. 

If you lived in the water all the time, as the sea-anemone does, 
and had to get oxygen out of the water, and had no special place 
inside of you in which to keep your lungs, you would have to be 
spread out as the anemone is, into as many branches as possible, 
and do all of your breathing through your skin. Then—if you were 
a sea-anemone—you would eat as it does. The way in which the 
anemone eats is something like the way in which the amoeba eats 
but yet is quite an improvement. 

The anemone lies all spread out like a flower, until a fish or 
some other of the little animals, upon which it lives, comes swimming 
along. As soon as it touches the arms of the sea-anemone, which 
look like the petals of a flower, these “petals” close around it, just 
as your fingers close around an apple. They gather in the food and 
push it into the anemone’s mouth. Then the anemone wraps its 
whole self around its food and shrinks up so that it looks like a 


126 EATS WITH ITS PETALS AND MOVES WHEN IT WANTS TO 

teacup turned upside down. It keeps to this shape until the food 
is digested. The anemone’s stomach is in the center of its body, 
but it seems to take the whole inside of the anemone to digest its 
food, just as it does with the little amoeba. 

The anemone’s stomach is one of the queerest things you ever 
saw. It is surrounded by little rooms that are connected with 
each other by two openings that we might call “windows.” Each 
of these rooms is also connected with the stomach in the middle, 
and with those parts which, as you see, look like the petals of a 
flower, when the anemone is spread out, waiting for its food. Each 
of these “petals” is hollow like the fingers of a glove. The anemone 
not only lives surrounded by water on the outside, but it is full of 
water on the inside. Water is to the anemone what blood is to you; 
it circulates all through the anemone, and the anemone makes its 
petal-like fingers stand up by filling them with water. These fingers 
are called tentacles. When the little animals on which the anemone 
lives, touch one of these tentacles, the anemone forces a large part 
of the water out of itself, shrinks up around its food and becomes 
a little upside down cup of an animal, with thin walls. 

The sea-anemone not only looks like the flower of that name, 
but it has something that reminds us of the vine called the Virginia 
Creeper. The anemone is fastened to a rock by a sucking disc. It 
holds on with this sucker a great deal tighter than the vine clings 
to a wall it is climbing, with its little sucker feet. If you try to 
pull a sea-anemone up, you might think it has a strong root running 
down into the rock. But it has only a sucker foot for clinging. 
Sea-anemones have been known to move, but as a rule they 
spend their lives contentedly, fastened to rocks near which they 
are born. 

This use of a sucker foot by the sea-anemone and the vine, is 
one of the many cases in which nature gets hold of a good idea and 
uses it over and over again. And she uses the sucker foot for plants 
and animals just as she uses the seed or egg for ferns and fishes, 
butternuts and butterflies. She gave the sea-anemone a sucker foot 
because he can get along best by clinging to a rock, and she gave 
the vine sucker feet to climb rocks and trees with. When the sucker 
foot idea once got into the two families of living things, Mother 
Nature seemed to say: 

“ Now all of you children who can use it, may have this little 
sucker foot.” 



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A GROUP OF SEA ANEMONES 
















EATS WITH ITS PETALS AND MOVES WHEN IT WANTS TO 127 


The oyster and the clam both have a sucker foot. The oyster 
uses his to fasten himself to something, as the anemone does, and 
stays there. But the clam uses his foot for travelling. So, the 
oyster, lying in one position, gets a shell that looks lop-sided, but 
the clam’s shell has both valves alike. People who live by themselves, 
in one place, get one-sided, too. Instead of saying “don’t be a clam” 
we ought to say, “don’t be an oyster.” The clam is well-balanced. 
A man is well-balanced who can see both sides of a question. 

My! My! Here we have wandered away from the sea-anemone 
looking at vines, clams and oysters, seeds and travelling minds, and 
almost have forgotten our little sea-anemone! But here he is stick¬ 
ing patiently to his rock. Perhaps he has other things to tell us. 

“Yes, indeed,” he says. “When you were speaking of sucker- 
feet you didn’t mention the fact that I had them long before there 
were sucker mouths. And how would human and some other animal 
babies get along without those, I’d like to know. You smack your 
lips over something good, don’t you? And you pucker it to kiss 
with, too. I taught you how. I pucker my sucker foot to cling with.” 

“And I taught birds to lay eggs. Well, I’m ready to admit 
that the sponge taught me.” 

Anemones, like the sponges, make eggs, or seed babies. These 
eggs hatch into odd little animals that, for awhile, swim about in 
the water. .They finally settle down on a rock, and grow into these 
beautiful flower-like animals that are found in the gardens under 
the great waters of the world. You can see that the anemone, which 
is so much higher a type than the sponge, at the same time repeats 
the habits of the sponge in first being a free, swimming animal, and 
then settling down in one spot. The anemone, however, can move 
about a little while, but the sponge cannot. After it once settles 
down the sponge must stay there for life. The anemone can move 
only a few inches a day; so I suppose it says, “Oh what’s the use,” 
and generally it stays in one place. 

But, low down as it is in the scale of life, like the jelly fish, the 
anemone has learned how to move. So, it begins to foretell the 
wonderful animals that are coming, that can swim in the water, 
fly in the air, and finally run about on the land. And that’s fore¬ 
telling little boys and girls, you know. 

My! But wasn’t it a tre-m^mi-ous thing for a little sea-anemone 
to let go of the rock and move, if ever so little a way? See Sea- 
Anemone, page 1712. 


128 


THE WEB OF LIFE: MOTHER NATURE AT HER LOOM 


IV. THE WEB OF LIFE: MOTHER NATURE AT HER LOOM 

Big boys and girls, when they finish high-school, have to write 
graduation essays. One of the subjects they often choose to write 
about is “The Web of Life is Strangely Woven.” They like to tell 
how life is made up of different things, all woven together: Joy and 
sorrow, health and sickness, work and play are woven in and out 
into one web. They see the poetry and the prose of living, loving, 
working, enjoying. 

The writer of this had been out of school a long, long time before 
he learned that his own body was just such a wonderful web. A 
living body, of a plant or an animal, is a web. It is made up of single 
cells, multiplied and woven together. Mother Nature uses the same 
kind of cells, put together in different ways, to make leaf, stem, 
bark, flower and fruit, in the tree. So she makes skin-tissue, bone- 
tissue, muscle-tissue, nerve-tissue in the animal. 

It took Mother Nature ages and ages, sitting at her loom, experi¬ 
menting, to learn to make these different tissues out of one material. 
In the amoeba she had only a very thin skin and a jelly-like muscle. 
In the sponge she made a horny bone. In the earthworm she made 
the first ring muscle. 

If you get up very close to Mother Nature, as she sits at her 
loom, you can watch how she works. Her shuttle has a back and 
forth movement, through the long web of lives. First, she made a 
plant cell that couldn’t move, then an animal that could. Then she 
made the sponge, an animal that was fastened to a rock, like a deep- 
sea lichen; then a sea-anemone that could let go of the rock. The 
amoeba hasn’t any bones, the sponge has, the jelly-fish hasn’t, the 
star-fish has. Now bones are very important. Why, when Mother 
Nature learned to make them for sponges, did she drop the idea, 
and then come back to it afterwards? 

Let us see if we can find out. We will also see Mother Nature 
weaving lower forms of life into the higher. What looks more different 
than Johnny with his fishing pole, and the earthworm he uses for 
bait? Yet there are many things about that earthworm that are 
just like things in Johnny. The earthworm’s body is made up of 
ring muscles. Those are the very first hints of the ring-joints in 
Johnny’s backbone. Those ring muscles are what makes it possible 


THE WEB OF LIFE: MOTHER NATURE AT HER LOOM 


129 


for the earthworm to turn and twist and move forward and to shrink. 

Yet, in making those ring muscles for the earthworm, Mother 
Nature’s shuttle shot back across the web. She dropped the bones 
she made for the sponge and star-fish. One thing at a time, she says. 
I’ll go back for those bones, when I get ready to put the earthworm 
into a shell. The crawfish is only a worm in a shell. The spider, 
the ant, the bee and the fly are all ring-jointed, but have no shell. 
When she got up to insects, Mother Nature dropped the bone or 
shell idea, to make better brains and senses. The bee, the ant, and 
the spider have such large brains, in proportion to their bodies, that 
they are a wonder to men. 

Having made brains and sensitive nerves, Mother Nature began 
to use bones again. But when she made ring bones along the back 
of the fish, she dropped behind in brain power. A fish isn’t nearly 
as bright as an insect. A reptile is a little brighter than a fish, a 
bird—you know how “smart” a crow is? By and by, Mother Nature 
made little boys and girls who can read, and understand this story 
of life. 

It is very important to have a backbone, something to stand 
up with. You saw that in the-great world of plants, when the simple 
yeast cell was slowly changed into the noble forest trees. All animals 
with a backbone are put into one class, called vertebrates. Those 
without backbones are called invertebrates. 

Man is the most wonderful of all the animals, but even he isn’t 
as clever in everything as are many of his humble relatives. He 
cannot swim like the fish, nor fly like the bird. That is he cannot 
do these things at first. But he has brains to “think out” things. 
Then he can build ships and flying machines. 

When he first comes into the world, man is the most helpless 
of all animals, and he remains helpless the longest. But that is an 
improvement. It was a great thing in the history of life when animals 
began to think about their babies, and about taking care of them. 
Little insects born as creeping larva, are able to take care of them¬ 
selves as soon as they come out of the cocoon. But they never get 
very far, and they soon die. It is only when animals begin to spend 
a part of their lives learning things of their mamas—as spiders and 
ants and bees and birds do—that they amount to much. 

The children of savage men—such as Indians—live longer with 
their parents and depend upon them more than do the animals, and 
so they learn still more. White children spend still more of their 


130 


THE WEB OF LIFE! MOTHER NATURE AT HER LOOM 


time at home, and at a great place called school, which gives all of 
its time to carrying on the work that is begun in the home. 

In both home and school the greatest thing of all that a boy 
or girl learns, is to love and to help other people. So far as his body 
is concerned, a boy doesn’t differ so very much from animals lower 
than himself. He differs most of all in his power to reason, and to 
think and to care for the happiness of others. He has a sense of 
right and wrong, of honor, of justice, of unselfishness, of fair play, 
of pity. These are the social and moral powers that, alone, make 
human beings far above all the other animals. 

But these fine feelings, too, began far back with the first animals 
that cared for their babies. Long before Mother Nature got up to 
human beings, she made ants and bees live and work in colonies, 
and birds care tenderly for their nestlings. 

What, do you suppose, was the very first animal that carried 
her helpless babies about with her, and fed them in some strange way ? 




STARFISH, AND SEA URCHINS THAT PLAY WITH LIVE DOLLS 


131 


V. STARFISH, AND SEA URCHINS THAT PLAY WITH 

LIVE DOLLS 

Animals like the sponge and the sea-anemone rank higher in 
the scale of life than the amoeba because they are hollow-bodied. 
The next higher step is taken by the group of animals to which the 
starfish, the sea urchin and the sea cucumber belong. They may 
be said to have real stomachs. The sponge and the anemone only 
have a special place in the body set apart for digesting food. 

Of course there are many strange and interesting things about 
these animals as there are about everything in the great book of 
nature, when you come to look at it closely. Probably the amoeba' 
doesn’t have as much trouble with his stomach as you do sometimes 
when you eat more than you should; for if the 
part of himself he happens to use for a stomach 
today gets out of order, he can use the other 
side of himself for a stomach tomorrow, and so 
give today’s stomach a rest. That is the best 
thing a boy can do for his stomach when it 
gets out of order. Give it a rest. But the 
sea cucumber can throw away its stomach and 
grow a new one. 

The starfish belong to the spiny-bodied 
group. They are higher than the sponges and 
animals of that class, not only in having 
stomachs more like ours, but in other ways. 

They are the first animals that begin to walk 
on solid ground. This they do by forcing water 
into the suckers with which they get their food. 

When the suckers are made firm and strong by 
being filled with water taken into the little 
animal’s mouth, they are firm enough to walk 
with. (Don’t you see how in the starfish, 

Nature is using over again the sucker foot of 
the anemone, and his water-filled “petals”?) 

The starfish has nerves, as we have already learned. These 
animals are called starfish because a great many of them are shaped 
like five-pointed stars. The body is in the center, and the rays 



SEA-CUCUMBER 


A sea animal which 
seizes its food with the 
long tentacles seen at 
top of picture. Through 
these it breathes also. 
It moves by the tubes 
or feet seen on the 
body, which when filled 
with water act as suck¬ 
ers and drag the ani¬ 
mal over the bottom. 


132 STARFISH, AND SEA URCHINS THAT PLAY WITH LIVE DOLLS 

correspond to our legs and arms. The nerves run along each ray. 
At the tip of each ray is a little dim eye, and a filmy covering that 
takes the place of an eyelid. Each ray is really a branch of the 
stomach. Little canals run from the stomach, which is in the center 
of the starfish’s body, out to the end of each ray. 

The starfish can move each ray separately, just as you can move 
each of your legs or each of your fingers. In this way the starfish 
is able to travel much faster than you would imagine. 

Another member of the great hollow-bodied family, to which 
you, too, belong, is the sea urchin. In the water, these sea urchins 
look like round pin cushions stuck all over with black pins, with 
the points on the outside. When you find them on the sea beach, 
with all their spines gone, you think them a kind of sea shell. These 
“pins” are to protect the sea urchin against its enemies. They 
branch out in every direction like the bayonets of soldiers. That 
spine armor idea was so good, that Mother Nature used it for the 
porcupine, and for the thistle and the rose. The sea urchin uses these 
pins to walk with but, although they have between three and four 
thousand of these pin feet, they get along very slowly. Whenever 
we make a specialty of anything we can always do it better. It is 
when animals come to have two feet, as in the case of man or the 
ostrich—or four feet, as with squirrels—that they can run and climb 
trees and build houses and do other things that the sea urchin never 
even dreams of. 

The sea urchin lays eggs, and from these eggs come the young 
urchins. (What other animal have we already found, that lays 
eggs?) When they are babies they don’t look a bit like their parents. 
And here is another thing that the sea urchin does that you will 
remember when we come to kangaroos. Some of the sea urchins 
carry their babies in pouches. They fold their spines over their 
babies just as you carry a doll in your arms. 

Do you remember, among the strange things that happened 
in “Alice in Wonderland”, that there was a cat that faded, and 
faded away, and left nothing but the grin? You have seen a great 
many cats without a grin, but a grin without the cat really seems 
improbable. But this—that I am going to tell you—has happened, 
not once but many times; no doubt millions of times: 

An animal has faded away and left nothing but its mouth! 
This animal is called the sympata, and is a member of the sea cucumber 
family. Whenever this animal fails to get food for some time, it 


STARFISH, AND SEA URCHINS THAT PLAY WITH LIVE DOLLS 133 

seems to say to itself: “If I wasn’t so big I wouldn’t be so hungry;” 
so, to save expenses, it drops off a piece of its body. If it still cannot 
find enough to eat, it drops off another piece—and so on until there 
is nothing left but its mouth. Then, if it gets something to eat, it 
begins growing again, and so replaces all those parts of itself that 
it threw away. The spider and the lobster can grow new legs lost 
in a fight or accident. 

That seems very strange until we remember that when we are 
ill, or for any other reason eat and digest less than we need, we lose 
flesh, too, though not all in one spot. Then, when we begin to get 
well we put it on again. 

Perhaps our bodies wouldn’t know how to do that if this queer 
little animal hadn’t taught nature how! And perhaps we wouldn’t 
have five fingers and five toes if the starfish hadn’t counted five 
first; nor any eyes or nerves if he hadn’t found them for us. 

And, Mary, when you carry your doll baby in your arms, 
remember the sea urchin did it first! 

Perhaps she taught you how. 

Perhaps. 

Who knows? 

At any rate, there she is—Mrs. Sea Urchin, carrying her little 
urchins in her spiny arms! 


134 


A LONG SPEECH BY A LITTLE WORM 


VI. A LONG SPEECH BY A LITTLE WORM 

All worms are of a higher order than the spiny-bodied animals 
such as the sea-urchin and the starfish. This is not exactly because 
some of them do such bright things as to build houses and hang 
front gates. It is because they are better made; and so, on the whole, 
are better fitted for their work in the world. 

To be “better made,” in the animal and vegetable world, means 
to have more parts, and each part fitted to do some special thing. 
The amoeba has no feet, no stomach—no anything, you might 
almost say. If it needs a foot it makes it. When it wants to eat, 
it wraps itself around its food and one side is as good as the other 
for this “made to order” stomach. When we get up to the sea 
cucumber we find a little animal that has lungs and nerves and a 
stomach. To be sure the sea cucumber throws away its stomach 
when it gets excited, and then grows a new one. 

Now, when we come to the worms, we find still better machines 
for living. Take the worms you call “fish” worms. Their real name 
is earthworms, because they help to make the kind of earth in which 
plants grow best. You would be surprised to know in how many 
ways the earthworm is like you. 

For one thing, he has a stomach; not a stomach like the amoeba, 
made and unmade all the time; nor like the sea cucumber to be thrown 
away whenever he gets peevish—but a real stomach that he keeps 
all the time, and uses for nothing else. His body, as you see, is a 
tube. Inside the tube is another tube. This inside tube is his stomach. 

And he has blood, too. After the worm’s food is digested it 
becomes blood, as our food does. He has the beginnings of hearts, 
also. I say hearts, because worms have several hearts. The earth¬ 
worm, for instance, has five. They are simple little hearts that answer 
his purpose very well, but they wouldn’t do for you at all. You 
must have one heart with several parts, instead of five simple hearts. 
Whenever Nature wants anything better done, you notice, she turns 
it over to one part that will give the whole of its mind to it. 

The earthworm has one vein and one artery. Both are tubes 
like those that carry blood to and from your heart. One runs along 
his back, above his tube-like stomach. The other runs under his 
stomach. The five little hearts connect these two blood vessels, 


A LONG SPEECH BY A LITTLE WORM 


135 



like the rounds of a ladder, as you see from the picture. After the 
worm’s food is digested into blood, it oozes out into the rest of his 
body. The different parts of the worm are bathed in it, and so are 
made to grow. Most of the earthworm’s blood is used in this way; 
so only a part of it is passed back through the hearts. These hearts 
do not have so much to do as your heart does, and that is why they 
are so simple. In the next higher group of animals—those with a 
shell, like the crawfish—we will find the heart is not so simple. 

You notice the earthworm is made up of sections or rings of 
muscles, just as your backbone is made up of rings of bone. So 
he not only hints at the heart and blood vessels of 
animals higher than himself, but he seems to say: 

“ See how useful it is to be made up of rings. See 
how I can bend and turn and twist and get in and 
out, everywhere. The animals below me cannot do this. 

After awhile there will come an animal with a backbone, 
made up of rings. He will crawl on the ground, and 
be called a serpent. Then will come other animals with 
stiffer backbones and feet. They will not have a great 
many hooklike feet as I have. They will have only four 
good, jointed feet. In the water, also, there will be 
animals with backbones. Instead of feet they will have 
paddles or fins. Into the air will come animals with worm showing 
backbones, two feet and two fins, called wings. With rings^^mSscS 
these wings they will swim the air. 

“Last of all will come the most wonderful animal of all. At 
first, when he is a baby, he will creep about on his little stomach, 
just as I do. Then he will go about on four legs for a while—will 
creep on his hands and feet. Then, when his backbone grows stronger, 
and he has learned to stand alone, as the fern learned to do long 
ago, he will begin to walk with two of his legs, and the other two 
legs, now called arms, will be set free to use in other ways. 

“ On these arms will be hands, and on these hands five fingers, 
like the five rays of the starfish and the five petals of a flower. With 
these five fingers he will grasp, first of all, his food, as the star fish 
does with his five rays. Then with these hands and fingers he will 
make boats to go about in the water like fish. At first he will make 
only play boats, then, as he grows older, big boats, with fins, called 
paddles. After awhile he will make other boats with paddles or 
wings for swimming in the air. These the will call flying machines. 


An earth- 



136 


A LONG SPEECH BY A LITTLE WORM 


So, although he cannot swim as well as the fish, nor fly at all, as 
the bird does, he can make swimming machines and flying machines 
and so turn into a fish or a bird whenever he likes; just as if he w r ere 
part of a fairy tale. 

“What a wonderful big brother we worms will have then!*' 
says the little worm. 

“But,” adds the little worm, “let him not be too proud and 
forget us—his humble relations; and how nature made us all before 
she made him, and so learned how to give him that wonderful heart 
and brain. If she had not first made our crude little stomachs, 
where w r ould she have learned to make his good one? And until 
she had made our little hook-feet she couldn’t make hands and feet 
for him. Our nerves helped teach him how to feel. Our dim eyes 
that just enable us to tell light from darkness, taught him how to 
see. Our five simple little hearts helped show how one larger heart 
could be made for him, to feed his brain and body, and to teach him 
to love all his little brothers of the water, the earth and the air. 

“ Let him remember these things, and love all living things and 
be kind.” 


THE EARTHWORM PUTS ON ARMOR 


137 


VII. THE EARTHWORM PUTS ON ARMOR 

You needn’t be afraid of him, little friend Earthworm. This 
armored monster, with his long feelers, his stalk eyes and his great 
crooked arms with battle axes on the end of them! 

“Worse than that,” you say, “they’re battle scissors!” 

So they are, battle scissors. Did I say battle axes? 

Well, you needn’t be afraid of him, anyhow. He doesn’t do 
half the good in the world that you do. You help make the soil 
that grows things to eat, while he goes swaggering around—this fierce 
Mr. Crawfish, and his fiercer big brother, Mr. Lobster—fussing and 
fighting, and tearing into pieces everything they can lay their 
scissors on. 

We’re not afraid of them, are we? “Booh, Mr. Crawfish! Booh, 
Mr. Lobster!” We’ll show them they’re only worms, after all. 

Why, just look at your insides, Mr. Crawfish. You needn’t try to 
hide them under your jointed armor. We can see right through you! 

See that tube running from his stomach to the end of his tail? 
If that tube didn’t swell out into a stomach at one end, and if it 
wasn’t inside of such a queer, armored man-of-war, wouldn’t you say 
he was simply an earthworm? The earthworm lives on very simple 
breakfast food, the earth he burrows in, and he doesn’t need a big 
stomach to keep it in until it is digested, as the crawfish does; so 
he doesn’t have such a stomach. The earthworm’s food passes right 
through him and digests all the way down—tastes good all the way 
down, too, very likely, for he doesn’t have any special tongue to 
taste with, either. 

But the crawfish and the lobster and all their near relations, eat 
various things. They eat little fish, scales and all; pieces of each 
other, shell and all, when they get to fighting, for they are cannibals. 
So, having many different and very tough things to grind up and 
digest in their stomachs, they must have a big, strong mill to do it 
with. Like all fighting animals, they are large eaters. When men 
spent much of their time in fighting, they spent the most of the rest 
of it in eating strong meats and drinking strong drinks—which made 
them want to fight still more. And so they went from bad to worse, 
just as the crawfish and the lobster do, and died, at last, “with their 
boots on. ” Few of the lobsters die in their beds. 


138 


THE EARTHWORM PUTS ON ARMOR 


See that little northeast room of the crawfish’s stomach? It is 
not quite shut off from the main living-room. In that room are his 
stomach teeth. He has to have teeth to grind with, just as a hen does. 
But the hen, poor thing, has to use false teeth. You have seen her 
picking them up around the yard—little stones and bits of shell and 
such things, that she swallows. 

The crawfish and his kind have three of these teeth in their 
stomachs. With these teeth they grind finer the food that they have 
first torn to pieces with their pincher claws. 

The crawfish seems to have started, as a baby, to divide his 

stomach into three rooms. When he gets to be a bossy cow, eating 

clover in the pasture, he really 

does divide it into four stomachs, 

as you know. The cow stops the 

food that needs the most digestion 

in the first stomach. The food 

that needs less grinding stops in 

the second stomach. Real fine, 

partly digested food, like bran- 

mash, goes straight through, “by 

express,” into the third stomach. 

All of the food finally goes into 

the fourth and last stomach. The 

first stomach rolls the coarser food 

into little balls. These the cow 

brings up into her mouth again, 

and chews them over. Haven’t 

you seen cows chewing their cuds? 

In the crawfish there is a big 

front stomach, you see, like the 

first stomach of the cow, that we 

claw feet, four pairs fof legs, and the tail ca ll the paunch. In the chicken 
with its fringe of little hairy feelers. ... ... , 

it is the crop. Next comes the 
grinding mill in the northeast room, which works like the chicken’s 
gizzard. Beyond this is’the back room stomach that opens into the 
long, worm-like hallway that runs clear down to the tail. 

This back stomach of the crawfish is lined with little things 
sticking out from its walls. These hold back all the food that is 
too large to go through. Without this “ strainer, ” pieces of undigested 
food would get into Mr. Crawfish’s little insides, and make him double 






UNCLE SAM’S LOBSTER NURSERY 


things 


t l_I are some 

you would see it you 
visited one of Uncle Sam’s^ 
fish hatching stations. These ^ 
pictures were taken at a / 
hatchery where he makes | 
a specialty of raising lob¬ 
sters and then turning them 
out in ^the ocean to grow 

attached by a kind of glue 
to her swimmerettes, as 
shown in one of the pictures below. At these fish h 
jars. You see the hands of a man who is removing 
lobster on the right is in what is called the first sta 
to swim and is learning to walk. “Lobster” is froi 


Where 

the 

mother 
lobster 
carries 
her eggs 


At the fourth 
stage of growth 
lobsters are poured 
into the ocean. 


The copper ticket 
of the lobster below 
says: “Please return 
to Wickford Station 
and state where 
found.” 


Lobsters are 
caught in a pot or 
trap baited with 
fish or meat. 


In this circle are four chapters in the story of a lobster’s life. In the first two 
after the egg, lobsters can swim, but when they reach the fourth stage they lose the 
to swim and must learn to walk, as baby lobster is doing at the top of the page. 


















THE EARTHWORM PUTS ON ARMOR 


139 


all up—like a boy who has been eating green apples. Isn’t it queer 
that the stomach of the crawfish in the creek, and of the cow in the 
pasture, should be so much alike? This just goes to show again that 
you can’t judge by outside appearances alone. 

The blood of the crawfish circulates very much as the blood of 
the earthworm does. He has two long tubes for carrying it. One of 
these tubes runs along his back, the other along the underside of him. 

The tube at the top is a vein; the one at the bottom an artery. 
The vein carries the blood to his heart; the artery carries blood away 
from his heart. This, you know, is just what your veins and arteries 
do for you. You can feel the blood beating in one of your arteries 
by holding the thumb of one hand on the wrist of the other. 

As it is much more dangerous to cut an artery than a vein, your 
arteries are better protected than your veins. For instance, there are 
veins on the back of your hand, which is always bumping into things, 
but you have an artery on the inside of your arm and wrist where 
you seldom get hurt. Mr. Crawfish seems to know he must be more 
careful of his artery than of his vein. Look at the picture and see 
where he puts his artery. 

Mr. Crawfish seems to be a little careless about the way in which 
he carries his heart. You see, he has it away up on his back, between 
his shoulder blades, as it were. But, then, in changing and shifting 
parts in animals, Mother Nature seems to be a good deal as your 
mama is with the Spring house cleaning; she can’t get everything 
into the right place at once. But Mr. Crawfish has made the four 
hearts that he had when he was an angle worm into one heart, and 
that’s a very great improvement. 

Now here is a curious thing; the earthworm has four hearts, the 
crawfish has only one. You have only one; but just look at a 
picture of a human heart (See Heart, Vol. II, page 853) and see how 
many parts it has. Four? Yes, just four! 

Running along the underside of the earthworm you will notice 
a little white cord. It is like a thread with knots in it. This is his 
nervous system; his telegraph line. And the knots are the stations. 
In the crawfish and his family, there are two of these knotted cords 
running side by side, and joined together, at the points where the 
knots are. As Mr. Crawfish thinks mostly about eating and fighting 
he uses his nerves mostly to run his eating and fighting machines. 
So we find these little white telegraph wires running around his 
gullet. 


140 


THE EARTHWORM PUTS ON ARMOR 


In his head you will find several of these nerve knots grown 
together. And that’s little Mr. Crawfish’s little brain. 

Mother Nature doesn’t “cross bridges” until she comes to them; 
that is, she takes care of the business of every day without bothering 
herself too much about what she is going to do a long way ahead. 
She’s not like the little girl who got to dreaming how much money 
she was going to get for her eggs, and then how, by and by, she was 
going to sell more eggs, and so finally get enough to buy a silk dress. 
You know, while she was going along thinking of everything but 
where she was going, she tripped and fell. 

And the eggs—! 

Mother Nature always has her mind on her day’s work. She says: 
“Give us this day our daily duty, and the doing of it will keep us 
happy and get us ready for the next duty. ” 


l 


I 


HOW THE WORM IN ARMOR COUNTS BY TWOS AND THREES 141 


VIII. HOW THE WORM IN ARMOR COUNTS BY TWOS 

AND THREES 

Like ourselves, the crawfish is divided into three main parts, but 
differently. 

The front third of him carries his brain, his arms and legs, his 
eyes and feelers. The second third is his abdomen. The third part 
is his tail. 

Look at this picture of the inside of a crawfish. Notice where 
his stomach, and that long earthworm intestine, are. Now, imagine 
where they would be and what they would look like, if the brain 
of the crawfish should grow and grow, until it was as large, in 
proportion to the rest of his body, as your brain is. 

Wouldn’t the stomach be crowded into the abdomen, to make 
room for the brain? And wouldn’t that long, earthworm intestine be 



Section showing inside of crawfish: a, intestine; s, stomach; c, brain. 


doubled and folded, back and forth, just as you see the intestines of 
human beings, in the picture in your big brother’s physiology? 

Even in the spider, which, on the outside, is so much like the 
lobster, the intestine instead of being one long tube, begins to be 
folded, because the growth of the brain crowds it into a smaller 
space. The spider is much “smarter” than the lobster. She (for it 
is the lady spider that is so “smart”) has to be much cleverer than 
the lobster, to catch food for herself and her little ones. She must 
catch flying insects with a web that she must make for herself. She 
must do this, not only for herself but for her babies. The lobster 
and crawfish lay their eggs and then go away and leave them. If 
they had to support their families they would have to learn to be 






142 HOW THE WORM IN ARMOR COUNTS BY TWOS AND THREES 

brighter, too. We learn in doing things for ourselves; but we learn 
the most and the fastest when we do things for others. That’s nature’s 
way of teaching living things multiplication. 

Now, notice how nature does “examples” in addition, in making 
plants and animals. She seems, in her counting, to be like the funny 
old colored man, who was set to counting sheep. 

As the flock began passing through the gate, he said: 

“One, two, three—dar goes anoder, dar goes anoder, dar goes 
anoder! ’ ’ 

He couldn’t count above three! Nature seems to do a good deal 
of her counting in that way. She fits the parts of things together by 
ones and twos and threes. Plant and animal life begin with just 
one cell. The growth of a plant begins with just one shoot. Sometimes 
there are already two leaves on it when it comes above ground. But 
it always begins, either above or below ground, with a single shoot. 
Then come two leaves, making three parts. As it branches, each 
branch begins as a single shoot. It adds its leaves in the same way— 
in pairs, like your paired eyes and ears and nostrils, and hands and 
feet. After the first two leaves, come two more, making, with the 
shoot, five. Then two more—making seven; and so on. So the 
petals of most flowers are five in number. We have five senses and 
five fingers and five toes. The starfish eats with five fingers. Nature 
seems to enjoy doing things with “fives.” So don’t be ashamed if 
you still have to count on your five fingers. 

Now listen to the crawfish say his addition and multiplication 
table: 

“ I have two eyes, two feelers, two claw feet. Each of these feet 
has two claws. I have four pairs of legs—four on each of two sides. 
My body is divided, as you see, into three parts. Each of these three 
parts is made up of seven parts; seven rings like the earthworm’s, 
hinged together. Seven, as you see, is i+ 2+ 2+ 2.” 

In a few members of the crawfish family, some of these seven 
parts have grown together. But still, even these members of the 
family show each of the seven rings plainly, while they are babies. 
There, you see, is nature’s same old way of having her little ones 
tell the story of their grandparents. Perhaps you have read Scott’s 
“Tales of a Grandfather.” This grandfather tells the tales to the 
children. But in the story of the world, as we find it written in the 
Book of Nature, it is the children who first tell the story, if we will 
only look and listen very closely. 


HOW THE WORM IN ARMOR COUNTS BY TWOS AND THREES 143 


Even the crawfish’s legs and the spider’s legs have seven joints. 
In those members of the crawfish and lobster family where there are 
fewer than seven joints, either some of these joints have grown 
together, or they have shrunk up, from not being used, until they 
don’t look or act like joints at all. Sometimes we find them turned 
into little thread-like legs or feelers. You can see these feelers fringing 
the crawfish’s jaw-feet, and the end of his flipper tail. 

Why and how did Nature get into this way of counting by the 
odd numbers, i, 3, 5, 7? There is a reason given for this which you 
could not understand now. But you can easily understand it when 
you are older, if you keep on studying this wonderful Nature book 
which you see open all around you—in the woods, the water, the fields 
and the air. 

This you can easily understand now: That, having begun with 
one part, then having added two to this one, as you see in the growing 
plant to keep it balanced, things must go on by adding twos if they 
are to grow sym-met'ri-cal-ly. That is a long word, but you should 
learn to use it. Look it up in a dictionary and see how much it means. 
In plants and animals Mother Nature, whatever else she does, always 
builds sym-met'ri-cal-ly. 


144 


MR. CRAWFISH AND HIS TABLE MANNERS 


IX. MR. CRAWFISH AND HIS TABLE MANNERS 

When Mr. Crawfish was an earthworm he felt his way along with 
his pointed nose. Now that he is shut up inside of his shell—nose 
and all—what is he going to do? 

“Why, I’ll feel my way with my feelers,” he says. 

“And what are your feelers?” 

“Those two long things that I keep moving back and forth in 
front of me, as I go along. You have seen the same kind of feelers 
on insects. Yes, and the cat—she has whiskers, you know, that she 
uses somewhat as I do my feelers. The mouse, too, has whiskers. ” 

Speaking of noses, it is thought that Mr. Craw’fish can actually 
smell with these feelers. It is a good thing Mr. Crawfish is able to 
smell food, just as you and I do, because nobody calls him to break¬ 
fast—nobody, except his own nose. 

He must not only be up in time to eat his breakfast, but he must 
get it himself. “Help” is very scarce in Crawfish land. Everybody 
helps himself to everything he can lay his claws on, whether others 
have been helped or not. “Finders are keepers,” says Mr. Crawfish. 

Ln looking over Mr. Crawfish’s seven-jointed legs, we found that 
some of these legs had shrivelled up into little hairs, fringing his tail 
and other parts of his body. These hairs are really fingers to him— 
like those big, long feelers in front; for he feels things with them. 

If you have a crawfish in your aquarium at school—or the next 
time you meet one on the bank of a creek—move your finger back 
and forth in front of him. Do this some distance away; then 
closer. 

Yes, as you will learn by doing this, Mr. Crawfish is near-sighted. 
He would have to hold his morning paper very close to his nose. So, 
being near-sighted, he must have those long feelers, like a blind man’s 
cane, to pick his way along. 

It is believed, also, that Mr. Crawfish’s ears, such as he has,— 
for he is “near” of hearing, as well as near-sighted—are in those 
two bumps from which his feelers grow. Notice that he has four 
feelers—the two long ones we have been talking about, and two 
shorter ones just in front of them. 

Those pinchers are to get his food with. You will know that if 
he ever mistakes your little big toe for a nice dinner, when you grow 


MR. CRAWFISH AND HIS TABLE MANNERS 


145 


to be a larger boy, and go swimming in the same river with Mr. 
Crawfish. 

Those big front pinchers are called “claw feet.” As he has two 
little feelers and two big feelers, so Mr. Crawfish has two big pincher 
feet and two smaller ones. He uses these pincher legs and arms to 
walk with, to fight with and to eat with. 

Of course it’s ill-bred to fight; and so, as we might expect, Mr. 
Crawfish has very bad table manners. When he finds something to 
eat he just “gobbles” it down as fast as he can. He does this partly 
because he never sits down at the table with other little crawfish and 
learns to say: 

“May I help you to this, and this?” Or, “Do have some more 
of that. ” 

He hunts his food all alone. He eats it all alone. He crowds it 
into his lonely mouth as fast as he can. He does this because he 
hasn’t learned to think of anybody’s appetite but his own. And then 
he’s always afraid some bigger crawfish will come along and take it 
aw’ay from him! 

“Claws were made before knives and forks,” says the crawfish 
and the lobster, and they tear up their food as much as they can 
before they poke it into their jaws. 

To us the crawfish seems a good deal mixed up. For instance, 
he not only has jaws on his second pair of legs, but at the upper end 
of this second pair of legs are his gills. Now the gills of a water 
animal, as you know, are his lungs. 

Oh, no; you mustn’t think that Mr. Crawfish carries his lungs 
around outside of him, as you carry your school books, swung ovef 
your shoulder. He’s got a nice place to keep his lungs where he will 
not strike them with his great awkward arms and legs. There is a 
groove running back from each side of his mouth to two roomy places 
on each side of his body under his great back shield. In these two 
rooms he keeps his lungs. 

And did you ever!—he uses his third set of legs to help himself 
breathe. It is as if, in order to breathe, you had to keep scooping 
up handfuls of air and pouring it into your lungs. For, these legs 
have little scoops, or bailers, on them that scoop the water up and 
pour it over his gills. You see he must have fresh water for his lungs 
all the time, just as you must have fresh air for yours; only his fresh 
air is in the water itself. When he is moving—eating, or strolling 
along the sandy shore, as the walrus and the carpenter did—these 


146 


MR. CRAWFISH AND HIS TABLE MANNERS 


scoops, being a part of his legs, scoop up water out of the sand and 
so give him more fresh air just when he needs it most. You know 
you breathe harder when you are walking or running than when you 
are sitting still. Nature has that way of making one part serve another. 
When the crawfish learns the lesson from his leg scoops, that it is 
best to serve one another and not fight one another, he is much 
happier. 

And he helps to make others happy—which is the best part of 
it all, not only for them but for himself. It is even more blessed to 
give than to receive. For the happiest people are those who make 
others happy. 

Mr. Crawfish has learned the joy of making others happy by the 
time he gets to be a bird—say a pigeon or a robin—with a mate 
and little ones, and other birds to sing to. 

We’ll meet Mr. Crawfish again when he gets to be a bird. 

And we’ll know him, too—in spite of his feathers and wings— 
see if we don’t! 


THE CRAWFISH, THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 


147 


X. THE CRAWFISH, THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 

If you were giving Mr. Crawfish, Mr. Spider and Mr. Fly their 
places in the long line of march, wouldn’t you put them in 
the order I have named: first Mr. Crawfish, then Mr. Spider, then 
Mr. Fly? 

I would, judging just from the looks of them. I would put Mr. 
Spider next to Mr. Crawfish. He certainly looks a great deal more 
like Mr. Crawfish than Mr. Fly does. 

But we would both be wrong; for the spider is farther advanced 
in the scale of life than either the crawfish or the fly. So we would 
have to ask Mr. Fly to fall in behind him in the “procession.” 

Yet we must not forget there are some things in which the spider 
is more like the crawfish than the fly is. In form it is plain, he is 
more like the crawfish. 

And, in one thing, the oyster is more like the crawfish than 
either the spider or the fly. In what way? The oyster has lime in 
his shell, just as the crawfish has, only a great deal more of it; while 
flies and other insects have no lime in their shells. Or, to put it in 
another way, Nature stopped using lime when she made the insects, 
and took it up again when she got to oysters. 

Nature is a great artist in form, in color, in music; she never 
strikes notes that are too near each other. 

Strike two notes on the piano that are side by side and see how 
they sound. They don’t sound “right,” do they? And if you play 
too slowly—letting the sound of one note die away entirely before you 
strike another, you don’t get much of a tune. To make a tune, one 
note must run into another—the sound of one beginning before the 
other has stopped. 

So, as you see, Nature playing her great harmonies of form and 
color and sound, you will notice these two things: She doesn’t make 
the different orders of things too much alike. And yet the differences 
are not so great that you lose the connection. 

Now, look again at Mr. Crawfish, Mr. Fly and Mr. Spider. There 
they go in just that order—one, two, three. Mr. Spider, although 
he looks so much more.like Mr. Crawfish than Mr. Fly, doesn’t come 
next to him in the procession. Doesn’t it look as if Nature “skipped 
a note” when she made him? 


148 


THE CRAWFISH, THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 


Not only in the forms of things, but in the stuff they are made 
of, Nature does skip. She puts lime in the shells of the crawfish 
and the oyster, but leaves it out of the shells of insects, which come 
between them. Not all insects have shells, as you know, but such 
of them as have shells for their backs, or shell-like scales for wings, 
do not have any lime in them. 

Why do the crawfish and the oyster have lime in their shells, 
while the insects haven’t? Think of the lives they lead and you will 
see the answer. If the crawfishes and the lobster didn’t wear strong 
armor, what would happen to them in the fighting lives they lead? 
And what would happen to poor Mr. Oyster, who can’t fight at all, 
if his shell were not still thicker? 

Flies, grasshoppers, butterflies and a lot of other little friends 
of yours, belong to the great insect family. There are several reasons 
why they are placed higher up than the crawfish family. For one 
thing they have three distinct regions of the body. In that respect 
they are more like human beings than the crawfish family. 

Insects also have but six legs. “ Do one thing at a time, and do 
it well,” seems to be Nature’s motto. So, in comparing the inner 
and the outer forms of different members of the animal world we 
see special parts developing all the time to do new things—as in the 
case of wings in birds; or to do old things better, as we see when 
we come to comparing stomachs. 

The earthworm has a very simple stomach. His inside is almost 
all stomach; just a simple tube that digests all the way down. In 
the crawfish we see these “insides” are pretty much all tube. But, 
instead of having a lot of legs, like the earthworm, the crawfish has 
fewer legs; and these legs differ from each other, and are used for 
different purposes. The earthworm’s legs are all alike and are all 
used for one purpose—to help him get along over the ground. 

In the insects we see still fewer legs. Insects always have three 
pair of legs, while the crawfish has four pairs. Still higher up in 
the scale are the animals with only two pairs. You see how Nature 
makes fewer and fewer legs as she goes up and up? Finally she 
makes two of these four legs into wings, and lo, a bird! Or she 
makes them into arms, and behold, a little boy or girl! So the legs 
grow fewer in number and more useful. Think how much better it 
is to have two real good legs and a pair of arms, than to have as 
many legs as the earthworm or the “thousand legged” worm, and 
no arms or wings or anything like that—just legs, legs, legs. 


THE CRAWFISH, THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 


149 


As the “outsides” of the animal get more parts, the “insides” 
must get more parts, too, and each of these parts must begin to 
do a special work. The amoeba hasn’t any real stomach at all; or 
he’s all stomach—whichever way you look at it. By the time we 
get up to the earthworm, we find a special part that does the digesting. 
In the crawfish we see part of the earthworm’s tube enlarged into a 
three-roomed stomach at one end, while the rest of the tube runs 
straight through him, just as it does through the earthworm. 

The inside of the earthworm is all one room. The crawfish has 
two rooms. In the insects this inside space begins to be divided 
into three rooms. In animals higher than insects, these three rooms 
are divided more sharply. There is one room for the head, one for 
the lungs and heart parts, one for the digestion of food. 

Even in man there are only these three rooms in the body. It 
is as if Nature said: “There! A three-roomed house is good enough 
for anybody.” 

But, beside more rooms, we need more inside “eating tools.” 
The stomach, the liver, the lungs and other organs, are only inside 
eating tools. They divide the water, air and food up, more and 
more, and pass it on. It is so important to improve the inside of 
an animal’s house, to keep up with the improvements on the out¬ 
side, that Nature seems to stop all outside work for awhile to attend 
to this. It is in the oyster that we first find the most changes of 
inside parts. And this is why he is placed so high up in the scale 
of life, although he looks so very simple on the outside. 

As we imagined the earthworm to put on armor and become a 
crawfish, because we could see the earthworm so plainly inside the 
armor, now let us imagine the crawfish going into an oyster shell 
to improve his insides. He takes off his many-jointed legs and 
eating clippers, takes off his stalked eyes, his long finger-like feelers, 
shrinks into his shell, makes his shell still harder, so that it will not 
be easy for enemies to get in and disturb him. There, in his shell 
castle, he makes better the parts he had, and makes new parts that 
he never had before. 

Of course crawfish never do change into oysters. No animals 
change into each other in that way. It is more as it is in a family 
of boys. When they are boys they are pretty much alike, have the 
same plays, go to the same school—do everything pretty much 
alike. When they grow older and go out into the larger world, one 
becomes a lawyer, another a carpenter or a farmer, another a loco* 


150 


THE CRAWFISH, THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 


motive engineer, and so on. So far as the things they are interested 
in and can do is concerned, they are now very different. Even in 
appearance they have changed a good deal, too, because of these 
differences in their businesses. But they have changed most of all 
in their minds. So the forms of animals, as well as their parts, change 
because of the kind of lives they lead. But it makes it more interest¬ 
ing, sometimes, just to play things; and we are playing now, that 
the crawfish turned into an oyster. 

In the next chapter we will open Mr. Oyster’s plain old shell 
and see what Mr. Crawfish was “up to” when he turned hermit, 
and w r ent into a shell castle to think things over. 


WHY THE CRAWFISH CRAWLED INTO A SHELL 


151 


XI. WHY THE CRAWFISH CRAWLED INTO A SHELL 

If I were to ask you “ What is the best part of an oyster, or a 
clam?” You would say: “The inside, of course.” 

And you would be right; but you might not mean just what I 
meant. There are probably no oysters in your aquarium, but you 
could easily, have snails. Snails, clams and oysters all belong to the 
mollusk family. “Mollusk” is from a Latin word meaning soft. 
All of these animals are soft bodied. 

While the mollusks are so simple on the outside, as compared 
with the crawfish, they have a good many more parts on the inside. 
The oyster is like a watch in more ways than one. It’s easy to see 
that he has a hard case; and also that this case opens and shuts 
with a hinge. He also has a little heart that goes like a watch: 
“Tick, tock; tick, tock.” So does your heart. The oyster also has 
two tubes, through which he breathes his food and air out of the 
water, and these tubes—or rather the water in them—goes back and 
forth, back and forth, like the pendulum of the big hall clock. 

Through one of these tubes he takes the water into himself. He 
passes it out through the other. The water flows over his gills or 
lungs, and so he gets his fresh air. And with these same gills he 
gets his food. The gills are full of little holes, and the holes are 
surrounded by little paddles—just as we have seen in the sponges and 
the crawfish, and in some of the plants. These paddles collect the one- 
celled plants and animals out of the water, and pass them on to the 
oyster’s mouth. His mouth, which is just above his foot, has four lips. 

While the lobster has such a big stomach—his three-roomed 
stomach—the oyster has a small stomach. There are at least two 
good reasons for this. One is that his life is so much quieter than 
the lobster’s. He doesn’t need to eat so much. Another is that, as 
he has so much better inside parts to digest with, he neither needs 
those outside claws to tear up his food, nor a big three-roomed 
stomach to keep straining out the large pieces and digesting them. 
There are no large pieces in his food, because he lives on little one- 
celled plants and animals. 

By dropping a little red ink from a medicine dropper into the 
water, near the opening of his two tubes, you can see the clam in 
your home aquarium breathing the water into himself and out again. 


152 


WHY THE CRAWFISH CRAWLED INTO A SHELL 


The oyster has muscles, also. Two of them are to open his 
two-leafed shell, and two of them to hold it tight shut. He holds 
it shut so tight that it takes somebody stronger than you are, and 
using an oyster knife, to open it. Why is it, do you suppose, that 
the muscles for shutting his door are so much larger than the muscles 
for opening it? 

That’s right: Mr. Oyster is afraid of burglars. And well he may 
be, for there are many burglars of his own kind—mollusks—who 
would like to break in and eat him. Some of them hav§ drills, and 
they drill a round hole in his shell in spite of locked doors. These 
little spiral shelled burglars belong to the snail family. And there 
are sponges that bore holes in the oyster’s shell. 

The oyster has also a much higher kind of heart than the craw¬ 
fish. It is divided into two big chambers, just as yours is. One is 
for receiving the blood, and the other for pumping it out through 
the body. You can easily see this little heart when the shell of the 
clam or oyster is opened, and count the beats. 

This heart is surrounded by a thin bag or membrane, just as it 
is in the higher animals; and it is called by the same long Latin name. 
But as we are not studying Latin yet, we won’t bother our heads 
with any more big words than we have to. Notice also that the 
oyster has kidneys, as the crawfish has not; and a greenish mass in 
his food tube. This greenish mass surrounds the stomach. It is 
called the pancreas. In higher animals there is a pancreas, and also 
a liver. Both the pancreas and the liver secrete a greenish liquid, 
or bile, which helps digestion. 

You also notice that the oyster has little blood vessels, real 
vessels with branches, just as yours have. These branches are in 
his little foot—for the oyster is a “one-legged man.” Why do the 
blood vessels branch only in his foot? Where have you the most 
and the largest veins? Yes, in those parts you exercise the most— 
your hands and feet and muscles. As you get nearer the heart these 
veins unite with each other forming fewer large veins; just as the 
branch lines of a railroad, from the smaller towns, unite with the 
main trunk line leading into the great city. 

Now that Mr. Crawfish has improved his insides so much, we 
will see him put on his tail, change his legs to fins, his shell to 
scales, and go to swimming again. 

Only, he will not swim backward this time, as the crawfish and 
lobster do. As a fish he will make a specialty of swimming. 


THE OYSTER LEARNS TO SWIM 


153 


XII. THE OYSTER LEARNS TO SWIM 

Of course no oyster ever did learn to swim, because when he did 
learn he was no longer an oyster. It looks more as if he once knew 
how to swim and then forgot. You see his near cousins, the craw¬ 
fish and the lobster could swim. To swim again he had to turn into 
something better than an oyster. 

You can’t imagine him coming out of his shell and turning into 
a fish, can you? Well, if you had never seen it you could not imagine 
a perfectly quiet egg coming out of its shell and turning into a beau¬ 
tiful bird; or a plant bursting out of a little brown seed and turning 
into an apple blossom. But it really wasn’t just like that about the 
oyster and the fish. It was more like fairy fungi turning into a fern. 
The oyster improved himself into a fish, very, very slowly. 

An egg has a shell of lime on the outside. So has the oyster. 
When the egg hatches the chicken has bones of lime on the inside. 
When the oyster improved himself into a fish he used the lime of 
his shell to make inside bones. He already had muscles, a stomach, 
blood vessels and nerves. But where did he get the idea of a jointed 
backbone? Where did he get the idea of swimming? Why, all plant 
and animal life began in the water. Living things were natural 
born swimmers. The oyster just forgot how. He was a water hermit. 
The angle or earthworm made ring muscles, and the lobster and 
crawfish jointed shells. The fish combined these old ideas of nature 
and made jointed ring bones for a backbone. 

Perhaps the oyster got tired of lying as still as a bump on a 
log. He noticed the crawfish swimming and, inside, the crawfish 
was not nearly so well made as he. So he ought to be able to swim 
still better. He wasn’t a bit ashamed of learning of his inferiors. 
So he opened his shell and his mind to his poor relation, Mr. Crawfish. 

“Dear Mr. Crawfish,” he said—for you can even make a craw- 
. fish good-natured and obliging if you call him “Dear Mr.;” “Dear 
Mr. Crawfish,- teach me how to swim.” 

“Oh, I’m not much of a swimmer,” said Mr. Crawfish, “I can 
only swim backward,” for Mr. Crawfish, like the rest of us, is more 
modest and, in other ways more polite, when he is good-natured. 
He doesn’t feel so boastful as he does when he is in a fighting 
mood. 


154 


THE OYSTER LEARNS TO SWIM 


“Well, you might swim better, dear Mr. Crawfish,” said polite 
Mr. Oyster, “but you have wonderful legs and claws. Now I have 
always led a quiet, peaceable life, and I don’t want any claws to 
fight with. And I have so much better insides—pardon me for 
saying so, Mr. Crawfish—that I don’t need those claws to tear up 
my food before I swallow it. But I do want to swim. 

“ Now, it seems to me, that if we would take that horny stuff 
your shell is made of, I could divide it up into little pieces, to shingle 
the outside of my soft body to protect it. Then I wouldn’t be afraid 
to come out of my shell house.” 

“Yes,” said Mr. Crawfish, becoming enthusiastic over his friend’s 
plans, “and when you got to be a bird you could use these same 
shingles for scales on your legs and feet, and to make the beak of 
your nose and your feathers and quills. Then, if you should happen, 
later on, to turn into a little boy you could use that material for 
finger nails and hair.” 

“And these scales,” says Mr. Oyster, “will need to be tough 
and smooth and round at the edges like a boy’s finger nails, so they 
won’t get broken easily.” 

“But what are you going to do with that bony shell of yours?” 
asked Mr. Lobster. “ It seems a great pity to throw it away. Mother 
Nature tells us never to throw anything away. And it’s a perfectly 
good shell.” 

“ You’re right. Just let’s think. I have got to fasten these 
strong muscles of mine to something. I notice you can’t move any¬ 
thing, unless you have something to rest the lever on.” 

Of course Mr. Oyster is right. A boy can’t pry up a stone unless 
he has something to rest the pryer or lever on. There was a man a 
long time ago who said he could move the world if he had something 
big and strong enough to rest a lever on. And he was right. 

“I can pry myself through the water backward,” says Mr. 
Lobster, ‘ but if I tried to swim by moving my tail to right and left 
I’d break in two. Besides, my flipper tail would have to be set up 
on edge for the rudder to steer myself with, and I would have to have 
paddles on the sides to swim forward as well as backward.” 

Oh, I get the whole idea now,” declared Mr. Oyster, getting 
quite excited, “I’ll take this limy shell of mine and put it on the 
inside, then I will have just the thing to fasten my muscles to. You 
see I fasten hinge muscles to it now, so I know how. I will have to 
divide it into jointed rings like the earthworm’s muscle rings, or my 


THE OYSTER LEARNS TO SWIM 


155 


backbone would be as stiff as a—well as an iron poker. Then I’ll 
make paddles on the sides, of the same horny substance that your 
shell is made of, but mixed with a softer substance so that I can furl 
and unfurl them like boat sails when I want to move through the 
water, and back up and turn and twist. The wings of those dragon¬ 
flies are made of just such stuff, but they aren’t thick and tough 
enough for flying through the water—those beautiful gauzy wings.’ 

So the oyster keeps his improved insides, shingles himself with 
scales made of the lobster’s shell, changes the claw legs into fins, 
sets his tail on edge for a rudder, makes an inside backbone of his 
limy, outside house, but jointed like the crawfish’s shell, and ringed 
like the muscles of the earthworm. He swallows some extra mouth¬ 
fuls of air in a little bag called his “swim bladder” to make himself 
lighter, and away he goes through the water! 

When he gets to be a bird you will see him twist his tail back 
again, and carry it in the same position the lobster does. It will 
lie flat on the air pressing it down, just as the lobster’s tail lies flat 
on the water. 

What will he do that for? 

That is the very first question we will take up when we come 
to birds—why does a bird have his tail set on like a crawfish ? 

But why not watch the next bird you see; notice how he uses 
his tail as a crawfish does. You can easily see this because he uses 
it in this way just when you can watch him best—when he drops 
to a perch. 


156 


THE OYSTER-FISH THAT CLIMBED ON SHORE 


XIII. THE OYSTER-FISH THAT CLIMBED ON SHORE 

Why \ve can almost see him do it. What? Why see Mr. Frog 
change into himself from, a fish! 

Right under our eyes, if we have him in an aquarium, where w^e 
can watch him, he changes from a water animal that swims just 
like a fish, to a land animal that jumps like a rabbit, a robin or a 
kangaroo. 

So, if we ever w r onder whether all the different kinds of insects 
and other animals could have grown out of one common cell, we 
have only to think of the strangely different parts that frog plays 
on the stage of life, in his one little lifetime; and how he came to 
get into the habit of changing himself like that. 

It isn’t the frog alone that goes through such wonderful changes. 
Isn’t that change from a lump of jelly in a limy shell into a downy, 
beautiful creature with little wings and little feet and a little “chirp, 
chirp” just as strange? Or the change from the flower-seed to 
flower, and back to seed again, just as strange as either the frog’s 
life story or a chicken’s life story? 

In the growth of everything in the world—all plants and all 
animals—there is this beginning in a lower form of life, and a grow¬ 
ing up through higher forms. And all plants and all animals begin 
with the lowest form of life—with a single cell. This is the way of 
growth of everything: Flower seed to flower, and back again; little 
egg to little bird and back again to egg; egg to tadpole, tadpole to 
frog and back again to egg. Egg to caterpillar, caterpillar to butter¬ 
fly, then to egg again. 

And back again, and back again; always “saying it over” as 
if Mother Nature were afraid we w r ould miss this wonderful story 
of the ages, and the great lesson of it all. 

“ You can change. You can be wdiat you w r ant to be. You 
can change your bones and muscles, but best of all, and fastest of 
all, you can change your minds and your hearts. You can do good 
things and great things today and better tomorrow, and all your 
life.” 

What has Mr. Frog to say about all this? 

He says he agrees to every word of it. He says this by his 
actions— L and actions speak louder than w r ords. Like most other 


THE OYSTER-FISH THAT CLIMBED ON SHORE 


157 


people he seems happiest when he is young; when he is a lively little 
tadpole. See him flirt and flip and flash through the water, playing 
with his little brother and sister tadpoles, as boys and girls play 
with each other, in the sunshine. Later, when he puts legs on his 
body and teeth in his mouth, hops out into the hard world and earns 
his living, he has many sober moments. 

It would be better for Mr. Frog if he could stay longer with 
his mama—or even if he knew he had a mama to stay with! And 
Mama Frog would learn to be much brighter and to bring up brighter 
sons and daughters if she stayed with her little ones and brooded 
them and fed them, for awhile, as the birds do. 

For, as we know, it is the animals that stay longest with their 
mamas and brothers and sisters that are the brightest and best of 
all. This whole group of animals to which the frog belongs is named 
after the one that says: “mamma!” They are called “mammals.” 
All Mama Frog ever does for her little ones is to find a nice, warm 
shallow place in which to lay her eggs. This she does in the spring. 
These eggs she covers with a thick coat of jelly that helps protect 
them from fish and other water animals that like a breakfast of 
fresh frog eggs. 

After while, lying in this warmed shallow water, the frog’s egg 
begins to grow long and narrow. A tadpole is on the inside stretching 
himself, after a sound sleep. And, sure enough, pretty soon, out 
wriggles a baby tadpole. 

He doesn’t seem to know yet that he is a baby frog. He seems 
to think he’s an oyster; for he first fastens himself to a water weed 
or something of that sort, with a sucker fastener like the oyster’s 
foot. Later, this sucker foot turns into a mouth—or rather he lets 
go, and begins to swim around, and uses for a mouth what he had 
been using for a foot. 

It is as if he said to himself: “No, come to think of it, I’m not 
an oyster. I’m a fish.” 

And so he goes plowing himself through the water like a fish, 
not backing himself through the water like a crawfish. But he still 
carries his lungs, that is, his gills, on the outside, very much as the 
lobster does all his life. So, for a while, it looks as if he had “ half 
a notion” to be, not a fish, but a crawfish. 

“But no,” he says. “I think it will be more fun to play fish.” 
So he soon gets rid of the outside gills and grows a new set that he 
puts inside, under a lid—just as the fish does. 


158 


THE OYSTER-FISH THAT CLIMBED ON SHORE 


Then it seems as if he gets tired of playing fish, and thinks it 
would be still nicer to get up on land and hop about. Maybe he 

thinks about flying, too. Good¬ 
ness only knows what goes on 
inside the heads of “little tads.” 
They change their minds and 
their bodies so often, and so 
surprisingly, they keep you guess¬ 
ing. Now the tadpole seems to 
be thinking most about hopping. 
He starts to grow two pair of 
legs. After the legs first come 
he has “lots of fun” with them, 
kicking himself through the 
water as a boy swims. Yet he 
still uses his tail in swimming, as 
if he hadn’t quite given up ' L * e 
dea of being a fish. 

Finally away goes his tail! 
And in the strangest way. For 
when he’s about two months 
old, he begins to eat a great 
deal less and just hangs around 
in the water—not swimming as 
much as he did, but just keeping 
still—thinking and thinking. His 
tail keeps growing smaller and 
He absorbs it into his body until 
No wonder he didn’t eat much else 



This picture shows how a frog grows: 
i, the eggs are fastened to the underside 
of a leaf in shallow water; 2 and 2a, tad¬ 
poles when first hatched, showing feather¬ 
like gills; 3, the gills have disappeared; 4, 
full-grown tadpoles; 5, hind legs begin to 
grow; 6, four legs appear; 7, the tail grows 
shorter; 8, the tail has disappeared, the 
tadpole has grown into a frog. 


smaller—shorter and shorter, 
finally he hasn’t any tail at all. 

—he’s been living on his tail! 

And now he isn’t a fish any more at all—he’s a frog. There he 
goes, hopping about on the shore, very lively and very happy. He 
keeps close to his old home in the water though, and every now and 
then plumps back into it; as if he wanted to keep up an acquaintance 
with his water friends. 

Or, perhaps, he goes back to look for his lost tail! 

I wonder if the kitten remembers when he was a tadpole. He 
seems to be wondering about his tail, anyhow. See how he keeps 
chasing it around and around. He doesn’t know as much about 
tadpole tails as we do—does he? 













STICKLEBACK MALE ROTATING IN HIS NEST TO MARE IT TUBULAR FOR THE FEMALE 



Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution 

FEMALE PREPARING TO ENTER A NEST TO LAY HER BGGS 












BIRDS OF THE WATER AND BIRDS OF THE AIR 


159 


XIV. BIRDS OF THE WATER AND BIRDS OF THE AIR 

What animals build nests? 

And lay eggs in the spring and early summer? 

And go in large companies with their mates from one part of 
the world to another, at certain seasons, following the sun? 

And float through the air—as the hawk does when he is sailing? 

And fly, as the hawk does, when he “swims” through the air? 

“Birds do all these things,” you say. So they do. But they 
are not the only animals that do them. As you know they are not 
the only animals that lay eggs either. Fish and frogs and snakes 
lay eggs also. Some fish build nests. Many migrate—going from 
one part of the water world to another, in the spring or early summer, 
to lay their eggs. 

The fish not only foretells the birds in these habits, but even 
in their differences in these habits. For, curiously enough, they 
have different ideas about where to build their nests, just as birds 
do. Some, like the beautiful little sunfish, that you know so well, 
lay their eggs on the ground—or beds of rivers—as the meadow¬ 
larks do. Others, like the stickle-back, build in the tops of water 
weeds. Red wing blackbirds build up in cat-tails and rushes. 

As if still further to hint that they too are related to our “ little 
brothers of the air,” these fish that build nests in little water trees, 
also guard the eggs. It is only the fish that lay their eggs in the 
tops of water weeds that are bright enough to guard them. So it 
will be interesting for you to find, by noticing and inquiring, 
whether birds that build their nests on the ground are as bright as 
those that build in bushes or trees. More kinds of enemies get at a 
nest on the ground. The brighter bird as a rule chooses the better 
place. But you must not expect to find all birds of the trees wiser 
than all birds of the ground; for there are the same kind of exceptions 
among the families of animals as there are among families of men. 
The meadow-lark is very clever about hiding its ground nest. 

And there are fish that fly, just as there are birds that swim. 
Flying fishes are found in all the warmer waters of the world. It 
is in the warm countries that many queer animals, that are part one 
thing and part like another, are found. You know a fish has a pair 
of fins that he wears on each side of his back in the same place that 


160 


BIRDS OF THE WATER AND BIRDS OF THE AIR 


the bird wears his wings. The back fins of the flying fish are much 
longer than those of the ordinary fish, with long ribs like a bat’s 
wings. 

These long, stout fins help the fish to jump out of the water— 
much as you may have seen a seal jump and climb up on a rock by 
means of his leg-fin-flippers. Then, once in the air, Mr. Flying Fish 
goes on flapping his fin wings and so manages to fly about three 
hundred yards—or the length of two city blocks. 

As a frog seems to loan his webbed feet to the swimming birds, 
because he tried them first and found them “handy” for paddles or 
oars, so fish seem to have been the inventor of wings. Later, other 
animals adopted the wing idea, flying frogs, flying bats, flying birds, 
flying squirrels. The flying frog is found in one of these warm places 
of the earth—the East Indies. He has much larger feet than our 
frogs have, and he uses the webs between his toes to help hold him¬ 
self in the air as he leaps from tree to tree; for he’s a tree-frog. 

When men first tried to learn to fly—isn’t it curious?—they did 
just as the flying frog and flying squirrel do. They got up on some 
high place, spread out something against the air to hold them up, 
and then jumped off. Just as little boys do when they jump from 
shed roofs, and try to sail down with umbrellas—only little boys 
mustn’t do this because it’s bad for the umbrella—and worse for 
the little boys—because it’s so easy to get hurt. In the same way 
an aeronaut jumps from a balloon, with an umbrella-like parachute 
to break the fall. 

If you have ever noticed a flying squirrel leap from tree to tree 
you have seen how useful those long thin strips of skin between 
his legs are to him. He can jump much farther than the ordinary 
squirrel because these extra strips of skin make a kind of wings to 
hold him up, just as the tree-frog’s little umbrella feet help to sup¬ 
port him and just as the bird’s wings, not only act as sails to send 
him through the air, but help to support him as he flies. 

Notice the flying squirrel. See, he jumps—not straight across 
but downward, in a slanting direction. And just before he lights he 
does just what a bird does before lighting—he turns and goes up 
again Do you know what he does this for? If he didn’t do it he 
would strike on his nose, against the tree—and real hard, too, because 
he is going pretty fast. Then he’d get a nose-bleed! As it is, by 
turning upward in his flight, he checks himself, as a boy does when, 
in skating, he turns up his foot and sticks the heel of his skate into 


BIRDS OF THE WATER AND BIRDS OF THE AIR 


161 


the ice. He is also in a position to light on all four legs instead of 
“lighting” on his little nose. 

You will notice that a bird spreads his tail much wider when 
he comes to light than he does when he is flying. Also notice that 
he curves upward, much as the crawfish does when he swims 
backward. See how his tail used in this way checks his flight? 

As we also saw, his quills, his beak and his “ toe nails” are made 
of the same stuff as the shell of the lobster. His bones are made of 
the same stuff as the shell of the oyster, and these bones and quills 
are hollow—like the reeds that grow by the water’s edge. Remember 
too, that the bird, as well as the fish, has scales; and these scales on 
his legs are of the same shape and made of the same kind of material 
as the fish’s scales. Its feathers, too—as you can plainly see is true 
of the quills—are made of the same scale stuff. And, as if to remind 
us of the bird’s relation to the fish, on the side of his scales—these 
scales, when the chicken or other little bird is young, look much 
like feathers. 

While the bird, both in form and action, is related to the fish 
and the crawfish on one side by his scales, his wings—which are only 
flying fins—and his tail, we will find that in these and other ways 
he is related to all four-footed things—and to two-footed and two¬ 
armed creatures. Examine the leg of a chicken and you will find 
there a thigh, a shin, and, of course, feet. In the ankle you will find 
what is left of seven bones. There are seven bones in your ankle, 
too; but in the bird some of these bones have disappeared and some 
have grown together, because the bird doesn’t use his feet enough to 
make so many bones necessary. If you had to keep your ankle still 
for a long time, say in a plaster cast, the bones would grow together, 
and doctors are very careful to see that joints are exercised just as 
soon as possible, in such cases. 

So, as we say that certain kinds of birds are pigeons, although 
they differ so much from one another; that a hawk and a duck are 
both birds, although they differ so much more; and that the fish, 
the pigeon, and the horse and the man are all alike in having back¬ 
bones, so we find, the more we study men and animals, that they 
are alike in more and more ways than we would ever imagine, just 
by looking at them. 

Particularly if we are thinking how different they are, which is 
very easy. Try, instead, to see in what ways they are like each other. 
That is harder, but is ever so much more interesting. 


162 


WATERBABIES AND OTHER BABIES THAT DRINK MILK 


XV. WATER BABIES AND OTHER BABIES THAT 

DRINK MILK 

As we have seen all the way through—and will see a great deal 
more, the more we look carefully at the picture in Nature’s wonder 
book, the higher forms of life keep summing up the lives below, and 
foretelling higher lives to come. 

The earthworm, with his joint-ringed body, foretells the craw¬ 
fish, with his jointed shell; the crawfish foretells the fish, with his 
tail set the other way, and the shell made into scales. The bird is 
a fish with true scales only on his legs, and the other scales changed 
to feathers and feather quills, the fins changed to wings and the tail 
turned back flat, like the lobster’s. 

You know, when you are listening to a story, if you happen to 
get to listening to something else for a few moments, how the rest 
of the story gets all mixed up? Then you ask mama to tell part of 
it over again. 

Mother Nature seems to want to be so sure that we will not 
miss the smallest part of her story—the story of lower lives growing 
into higher all the time. So she keeps going back and telling it over 
and over again, whether we ask her to or not. 

The higher the form of life, the more features of all forms of life 
it has in it. The crawfish, for example, couldn’t show us what wings 
looked like because his people and their near relations didn’t have 
any wings. Nor Mr. Fish couldn’t show us what feathers are because 
he never was a bird. But the bird can show us the fins of the fish 
in his wings, the fish’s scales on his legs, the jointed rings of the earth¬ 
worm in his backbone, the whole earthworm in his intestines. 

Not only because they are made of the same stuff, and because they 
have similar habits, are animals that look so different supposed to 
belong to the same great family, but there are many “connecting 
links” between different animals, like the fish that fly. Go far 
enough down the tree of life and you will find where one branch of 
the family is connected with some other branch that seems as different 
as can be. 

Fish and birds, the owl and the pussy cat, all belong to one great 
family—the back-boned family. But among the back-boned family 
those that suckle their young, as the cat does, are higher than those 


WATER BABIES AND OTHER BABIES THAT DRINK MILK 


163 


that do not. Animals and people learn and go up higher in life, in 
proportion as they are sociable. A mother and her babies are sociable 
with one another. They love each other and they teach each other. 
The mama cat learns to be shrewd and careful because she has other 
little mouths to feed and lives to protect, beside her own. It is just 
as true in the insect world. For example, the ants and spiders are 
both very bright. They know how to do many wonderful things, 
and these wonderful things are most of them done in taking care 
of their eggs, and the babies that are hatched out of these eggs. 

And do you know about how these ants keep other insects for 
cows? These “cow” insects are the little green lice that you find 
on plants. They are not good for the plants but they make good 
“cows.” They give down a kind of honey dew, just as the old cow 
gives milk for her babies. Don’t you wonder if this honey dew is 
meant for the babies of the aphis or plant lice? If it is true that 
they do give this sweet milk for their babies, they are really mammals, 
too, and when the higher animals feed their young in this way they 
are simply repeating something that is done away down in the 
insect world. 

Another odd thing about these aphides is that sometimes they 
lay eggs, and sometimes they bring forth their babies alive, already 
hatched. It is when they have wings that they lay eggs but have 
no milk, and in the state that they bring forth their young alive, 
they have this milk. So the more we think about it the more it 
seems as if these little bugs are mammals, too. 

But whether the aphis is one kind of a “bird” that suckles its 
young and so seems to want to remind us still more of the relation 
between birds and mammals, it is certain that there are egg-laying 
animals that suckle their young. One of these is the spiney ant- 
eater. Another is the duck mole. You can see from his name that 
he must be something like a duck and something like a mole. He 
burrows in the ground and suckles his young like a mole and he 
has a bill and lays eggs like a duck. 

Then there are fish that suckle their young. They might be 
called fish because they live in the water, and swim like fish; or they 
might be called sea-lions because they have sharp teeth and eat 
meat like dogs or lions, and suckle their young as the lioness does 
her cubs. 

As we find some mammals laying eggs—most of them seem to 
have dropped their egg-laying habits with their wings—so we find 


164 WATER BABIES AND OTHER BABIES THAT DRINK MILK 

some mammals that have wings but that do not lay eggs. Thus 
the great families of nature seem to be held together on both sides; 
just as you keep yourself in a tree by holding on to two different 
limbs, one with the left hand and one with the right. Bats have 
wings, as you know, much like the wings of a bird, and much like 
the fins of a fish, with great spiney ribs running through them. But 
bats suckle their young just as Mama Dog does her puppies. 

Notice how, in still another way, Nature seems to want to make 
sure that we see that we are all relations and should be kind to one 
another and find joy in studying each other’s lives and in making 
these lives as happy and helpful as possible. 

As we have seen that the lowest forms of life, both animal and 
vegetable, begin in the water so, in each new class of animals, there 
is this same grading up. Each begins as a water kind, goes up to 
land kinds, and then to tree kinds. Among the birds there is the 
duck that lives most of the time in the water. He swims more than 
he flies. Then there are the long-legged, long-billed birds that live 
most of the time on the edge of the water. There are other birds 
that build their nests in bushes or low trees near the water, and get 
their food from the seeds that grow on water plants or by catching 
fish or other water animals. Higher up are other birds that build 
their nests on the dry land in the meadow far away from the water. 
Others build in the bushes, higher up; others in low trees; still others 
in the tallest trees. You know how much brighter a crow in a pine 
tree is than a goose on a pond. 

So with the frogs—water frog, toad, a kind of land frog, and 
a tree toad; and even a flying frog. Notice the same thing among 
the rodents; the animals with sharp front teeth, like the two that 
first appear in baby’s mouth. The beaver is a water rodent; the 
ground squirrel, rat and mouse are ground rodents. Then there 
is the tree squirrel and the flying tree-squirrel. 

Water insects, moist-place insects, dry-land insects, bush insects, 
tree insects. Water mammals—the whale; “whales” that climb on 
rocks and get themselves called seals, “sea-lions” or sea-dogs; then 
our own home dogs. And some of these love water, like the water 
spaniel and Newfoundland dogs. Some are land dogs, like the fox, 
the wolf and greyhound. Others of this great dog-toothed, flesh¬ 
eating family—the “carnivora”—like the bears, can climb trees. 
They really do climb trees to get the food that a little insect brother, 
the bee, gathers and makes over in its own body to feed its 


WATER RABIES AND OTHER BABIES THAT DRINK MILK 


105 


young just as mama bear gives milk out of her own body to feed 
her cubs. 

How did animals and plants come to be so much like other 
animals and plants; and plants and animals so much like each other 
in shape, in their way of growing, moving and feeding and reproduc¬ 
ing? Why does the growth of every tree keep showing us how many 
different kinds of things each little seed can grow into—root, bark, 
leaf, blossom, fruit? One answer is that all things are related to 
one another, branched out from the same beginning, just as great 
families grow into brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts; cousins 
and second cousins—differing more and more, as a rule, as they are 
more distantly related. 

Another idea is that all the great families of animals—as bees 
and bears, birds and fish, horses and elephants—were made different 
in the first place, but yet made to resemble each other in these many 
unexpected ways to teach us how much we can learn from one 
another, and do for each other. 

Anyhow we can all agree that living things are much more 
alike than we might suppose, when we know little about them, 
whether we agree as to just how they got to be so much alike or not. 

And we can all agree, also, that it is much better to see where 
we are like other people in the things we believe, instead of quarrelling 
over the things in which we differ from them; and that, whatever 
else we believe, we can be sure that we are the happiest and most 
useful in proportion as we live to help every other body and every 
other thing—if we know and feel that all living things are little 
brothers in the water, the earth and the air. 


NATURE STUDY 


PART I-FLOWERS 


Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher —One day, more than sixty 
years ago, a group of young men in Harvard University were assigned a 
lesson in Zoology, by a new professor from Switzerland. He told them 
to study a live fish swimming in a tank. Every day for two weeks the 
class was sent back to look again at that fish. Then the teacher went to 
the tank with his pupils, and gave a lecture an hour long, on the things 
they had failed to see. The professor was Louis Agassiz. His method 
of teaching from the natural object, rather than from a text book, gave 
such amazing results that he won world-wide fame. His class-room was 
crowded with eager students who afterwards, having learned to see what 
they looked at, made discoveries in the natural sciences. 

It took a long time for this Nature study idea to work down into 
the primary grades. We have to get our knowledge of everything about 
us through the five senses. As the senses are keenest in childhood, that 
is the time to get into the habit of seeing. The successful man is the one 
who sees the most and best, and who grasps the meaning and relation of 
things, and applies them to his own particular affairs. The first object 
of nature study, then, is the training of the powers of observation. What 
a child observes matters little, so long as it secures his absorbing interest. 
How he observes it, matters a great deal. Any one flower, tree, insect, 
bird, animal or other natural object, truly seen, is as inexhaustible as 
Professor Agassiz’ fish, and is bound in infinite ways to the whole material 
universe. 

The following studies in nature are offered as examples and methods. 
Older people should read the article on Nature Study, in Volume III, 
page 1307. It is a summary of the best educational thought on the sub¬ 
ject, and gives plans to be followed in practical work. Midway of the 
common school period, in the fourth and fifth years, educators have 
noticed that there are “lean years,” when interest in books flags, and a 
child learns little and cares less. Nature Study gives the child something 
he wants to look up in text and reference work. It cultivates his sym¬ 
pathies, tastes and judgment, and makes him talk and write with eager 
intelligence. A microscope, a camera and a case for arranging and 
preserving specimens, are valuable helps. 


166 



PART I—FLOWERS 

I. A WILD GARDEN AND ITS TENANTS 

This is the story of a wild garden that was found near a public 
school on the edge of a big city. None of the children had the tiniest 
garden, and they were not allowed to pick flowers in the park, even 
to use in the school room for nature study. So this wild garden, 
where they could pick armsful of flowers, where they could pull 
plants up by the roots, where they could gather seed cases and 
cocoons, and watch insects at work, was a wonder and delight. 

Even the teachers did not know it was a garden, at first. It 
was a vacant block of land two hundred feet square. All around 
it ran a new cement walk. The ground was two or three feet below 
the level of the street and would cost a good deal to fill in. Perhaps 
that w r as why there were no houses on it. The soil was very poor. 
From the walks the earth crumbled away in steep banks of gravel, 
sand and yellow clay. Water lay in sunken places, making frozen 
ponds for sliding in winter. There was a fallen tree-trunk and two 
or three rotting stumps of scrub oaks, around which mosses and 
low ferns grew. In the spring the ground was boggy, and scantily 
covered w T ith ragged weeds and wire grass. Strips of blue grass turf 
below the walk, were dotted with the golden heads of the dandelion. 
In the wettest places a few clumps of blue flag lilies and pussy willows 
were found. Along one bank were brambles that, in June, blossomed 
the single pink flowers of the wdld rose. And there were clover 
blossoms. 

But that was all. When school closed in June the lot was 
covered with tall, coarse, ill-smelling weeds that gave no promise of 
flowers. But when school opened in September, the place was a 
jungle of purple and yellow, with swarms of winged visitors. 

On the strip of green sod under the edge of the walks, the dande¬ 
lions still showed bud and blossom and gauzy seed globe. But 
they did not take all the space. The grass was thick with the trefoil 
leaves and round buttons of white clover. And here and there was 
the glossy-leafed, pink-flowered spike of smart weed. Clambering 
up the bank grew a strong, rough-stemmed little vine with leaves 

167 


168 


A WILD GARDEN AND ITS TENANTS 


like a wild strawberry. At every twisted whorl of leaves was a tiny, 
star-like flower, as yellow as a butter-cup. It was the cinquefoil. 
Cinquefoil means five-leafed, as trefoil means three, so the little 
vine really was a far away cousin of the strawberry. Among the 
cinquefoil were clumps of mint. Their long, hairy stems and fuzzy 
leaves were topped with frowzy heads of lavender-pink, fringed with 
silver and breathing spicy smells. In every corner, and in many a 
crack of the sloping bank, stout burdocks were rooted. The pinkish- 
purple-topped green burs, in heavy knots, leaned out over the walk 
to catch in the clothing of passersby. 

Farther afield tall thistles lifted royal purple heads, crowned 
with plush. They had a soldier guard of sharp lances and spears 
set on stem and leaf and flower. But, unafraid, wild morning glory 
vines twined around their spiny columns and hung out delicate pink 
and red and white flower bells. The morning glories clambered up 
the dusty stalks, and bloomed among the small, pale, yellow flowers 
of the mulleins. 

In that wild garden were four varieties of clover—the w T hite, 
creeping clover of blue-grass lawns; the pinkish purple-headed clover 
of farm meadows; the tall, shrub-like sweet clover, with tassel 
blossoms of white, and a blood-red clover, with pointed heads like 
pine cones. The crimson clover is a foreigner. Grown all over 
Europe, it is not often seen in America. In that wild garden it was 
a well-born emigrant among hardy and rough American weeds. 

Except for the clovers, the smart weed, the morning glories, 
the white parasols of tansy, the mint and a few fiery spikes of the 
cardinal flower, the garden was a haze of yellow, spotted with purple. 
The long plumes of the golden-rod made a background for every¬ 
thing else. Against its feathery masses were set the dazzling yellow 
of the field sun flowers and black-eyed Susans. Much of the mustard 
had gone to seed. The tall plants were hung with tiny green pods, 
but there were still some clusters of yellow, cross-shaped flowers. 

Lower down, hidden in wire grass, were yellow-flowered sorrel, 
with acid leaves that the children liked to nibble. There was many 
a sturdy bunch of butter and eggs, with their cream and gold, lipped 
and spurred blossoms set on spikes, the country cousin of the snap¬ 
dragons of gardens. There were seed spikes and broad leaves of 
dock and plantain; the peppery seed sprays of the tongue grass, that 
gave a feast to all the pet canaries in the neighborhood, and the catnip 
mint that made pet pussies go into spasms of delight. But these 


A WILD GARDEN AND ITS TENANTS 


169 


plants only added to the green of the leaves. The purple notes in 
the riot of yellow were given by the royal heads of the thistles, the 
reddish purple spikes of the iron weed, and the violet and lavender 
ray-flowered clusters of wild asters. 

For several days the children were puzzled by an odor as sweet 
as that of lilies of the valley. It could be smelled only at night, 
when the garden lay dim and dewy under the moonlight. The 
perfume was traced to weedy stalks with small green-sheathed buds. 
They were not noticed by day, but opened pale, yellow, five-petaled 
rose-shaped flowers, after night fall. It was the evening primrose 
that grew in the shelter of dense thickets of golden-rod and asters. 
Big moths visited the primrose by night. In the day time the 
shrivelled blooms held drops of honey so sweet that wasps with steel 
blue wings passed all the open flowers by, to drink that nectar. 

Above the whole field insects were always on the wing. A little 
white butterfly was fond of the purple thistle. Bumble bees visited 
the thistles, the field clover and the butter and eggs. It was very 
funny to see a heavy, buzzing black and yellow bumble bee drop 
on the lower lip of a butter and eggs blossom, tip it down and force 
its greedy head into the long honey-filled spur. Little honey bees 
liked the white clover best. The golden-rod plumes, when in full 
blossom and gold-dusty with pollen, were always spotted with little 
black beetles that could scarcely be shaken off. This same little 
jetty beetle liked the dandelion pollen, too. 

Gauze winged dragon flies darted here and there; grasshoppers 
by hundreds leaped and clicked their wings, and robins and jay 
birds from a nearby park made raids on tne grasshoppers. A dozen 
varieties of butterflies were seen by day, and many a moth by night. 
On every dewy morning the webs of spiders were strung, with 
diamonds. The caterpillars had spun their cocoons on the stoutest 
of the weed-stalks, and flies grew sluggish in the cool nights. In 
dry places, and between the cracks of the walks, were little domes 
of sand, honey-combed with tiny holes. These were doors to under¬ 
ground houses of red and black ants. 

Soon there were many seeds flying about—seeds of the dande¬ 
lion, the thistle, the golden-rod, the milkweed. There were seeds 
with tails and wings and gauzy sails, and hooks and bursting pods. 
Every breeze loosened and scattered them. When frost came and 
killed the blossoms, the garden was a feeding ground for birds that 
ate the scarlet hips of the wild roses and the seeds of weeds. 


170 


A WILD GARDEN AND ITS TENANTS 


One sunny day of Indian summer, late in October, some boys 
digging for pupas of beetles that had gone to sleep in the ground, 
found a nest of field mice, and caught a glimpse of a chipmunk on 
a rotting stump. It was sitting on its haunches eating an acorn 
from the park. Alarmed by some noise they made, it whisked its 
tail and vanished. The hole to its underground home was found 
between the roots of the stump, hidden by feathery ferns and mosses. 
The school was wild about the discovery. So the teachers got books 
and pictures, and a dozen rooms were busy for a month studying 
and writing stories about chipmunks and ground and tree squirrels. 

The wild garden furnished this school living things to study all 
the year around, in plants and insects. Don’t you want to know 
some of the things they found out? You can find most of these 
plants and insects by many waysides in the country, and on vacant 
lots in cities. And you can get help in understanding them by 
looking up their names in this book. 









LITTLE LION TOOTH AND ITS COUSINS 


171 


II. LITTLE LION TOOTH AND ITS COUSINS 

In the spring, the grass that bordered the cement walk around 
the wild garden was not two inches high before it began to be dotted 
with the golden rosettes of the dandelion. When the warm 
fingers of the children closed around a bunch of short stems, 
the flowers soon closed into green-sheathed buds that refused 
to open again. So a boy who didn’t like to come to school, but 
who did like to roam in the fields and woods, was sent to bring 
in a whole plant. He was gone an hour, but he brought a fine 
plant, and such a fine story of how he got it that he fairly ran 
back to school. 

At first he tried to pull a plant up by the root. But the flower 
stems and leaves broke away. Then he dug around the base of a 
plant a little way, and got hold of the crown of the root. That 
snapped an inch below' the ground, breaking off a stout root half 
an inch thick. At last he went home and got a long, thin-bladed, 
table knife, that he sank in the soil to the handle and slipped all the 
way around the root to loosen the soil. When he pulled, the root 
snapped six inches under ground, leaving the tip buried there. Then, 
for he was a plever, determined boy who wouldn’t give up, some¬ 
thing like a dandelion in that, he dug a trench around the plant 
and sank the knife deeper. He tried six times before he got a whole, 
unbroken root. But he got it! 

“Bravo! Stout little lion-tooth; you know how to hold on!” 
said the teacher, clapping her hands. The children were puzzled. 
Did she mean the boy or the plant? Perhaps both. 

“Lion-tooth?” cried a dozen excited voices. Why, yes. .The 
French people long ago noticed that this wayside flower has a 
narrow, tooth-notched leaf, so they called it dent-du-lion. In England, 
where the meaning of the name was not known, it was changed to 
dandelion. You know r a tooth doctor is a dent- ist. Very likely the 
lion part of the name was given because this kind of plant is king 
of all plants, as the lion is king of the animals. The English people 
had a name of their own for it. They called it Peasant’s Clock. A 
peasant is a farmer. Farmers have to get up early and go to bed 
early. The dandelion opens its yellow eye at four o’clock and shuts 
it at eight or nine—a very good clock for farmers. Another old 



172 


LITTLE LION TOOTH AND ITS COUSINS 


English name for it is Blow Ball, because of its gauzy, feathered 
seed globe that every wind scatters. 

The root of the dandelion is round, rough, tapering from crown 
to tip, almost black on the outside, brittle but tough, hollow in the 
middle, giving it strength with lightness, and with many root-hair 
water suckers. The leaves grow in spreading, flattened circles from 
the crown, with the flower stems set around the inner circle. Rain, 
falling on leaves and flowers, drains right into the hollow root. So 
the dandelion begins to use water at once. 

The dandelion opens day after day, the blossom head growing 
larger, and its stem stretching and lengthening into a hollow, rubbery 
pipe. When pulled the stem stretches a little, like rubber, before 
it snaps. And out of the broken end oozes a thick milky sap that 
stains the hands brown and makes them feel sticky. The sap of 
the rubber tree is a thick, milky fluid much like that of the dande¬ 
lion. The dandelion has some rubber, resin, sugar, and a bitter 
medicine in its sap. Do you know of any other milky-sapped plants? 
Milkweed! 

Did you ever split a hollow stem of dandelion in strips, and pull 
it through your mouth to make a bunch of curls? It tasted bitter, 
didn’t it? Every part of the plant has that bitter taste, very strong 
in the old roots, just a hint in the young leaves. In the country, 
people often gather the young leaves of dandelion with mustard and 
curly dock leaves, and cook them for greens. They are better than 
spinach. The French use their dent-du-lion leaves for salad, as we 
use lettuce. Indeed, lettuce is a cousin of the dandelion, so is chicory 
or endive, another salad plant They both have that slightly bitter 
taste and milky sap. All of the plants of this family are useful in 
making medicines. One of them is called solidado, which means 
to cure, or to make whole. 

When there were plenty of blossoms of the dandelion every¬ 
where, each child brought a big one, as round and yellow and as 
many rayed as a baby sun, to school. They traced the circles of 
yellow strap shaped petals, and tried to count the sunny rays. They 
got their finger tips all gold-dusty with pollen and learned, in that 
way, how the honey bees and butterflies carry pollen away on their 
legs. They found that the rays all had their stems sunk in a soft, green 
vase. With sharp finger nails they split the sides of the vases and 
spread them open. The rays just fell apart, so one could be picked 
out and studied under a microscope. Gi owing upward from the 


LITTLE LION TOOTH AND ITS COUSINS 


17.3 


little swollen base of each ray, were shining threads tipped with 
buttons or pollen dust—seed makers! 

“Why,” said a surprised little girl, “just this yellow ray and 
the things growing on it look like a whole flower! ’ ’ 

“ It is. A dandelion head is a whole bouquet of flowers in 
a cup.” 

“It’s something like a United States of flowers, isn’t it?” asked 
a boy. 

“That’s it! A great scientist has said that the motto of the 
dandelion and its cousins seems to be ‘United we stand.’” 

Really, the dandelion might be chosen for our national flow T er. 
It grows everywhere; it blooms from April until frost, and it is hard 
to conquer, once it gets a foothold. It’s root goes deep and lives 
over winter. You may cut the plant off, burn the ground over, or 
plow it up, but the smallest root tip sends up a new plant. Every 
seed globe scatters it far. Count the seeds of the Blow Ball. Sturdy, 
determined little Lion Tooth, it hangs onto every one of its thousand 
chances of life. 

There is another reason why it might be a good national flower. 
Its ray flowers, its toothed leaves, its long, swaying stems and gauzy 
seed globes could be used in many beautiful forms of art. They 
could be used as rosettes and borders, and the bases and capitals 
of stone pillars. See what pretty designs in charcoal, crayon and 
water-color you can make from studies of the dandelion. 

These many-in-one flowers are called composites. All the ray 
flowers belong to this family—the daisy, the sun-flower, the asters, 
the chrysanthemums, dog-fennel, rosin-weed, thistles, the—guess! 
But you never will—the golden-rod! 

That tall, rough, weedy stalk, with hairy leaves and long, droop¬ 
ing plume of flowers doesn’t look at all like the ray flowers. The 
separate flowers are more like fairy lily bells. But a number of 
them are crowded into one head, and the seed are ray-feathered for 
flight. Like the dandelion, the golden-rod grows everywhere on 
good or poor soil. It sends down a stout root that fights for its life, 
and it makes countless seeds. 

The composite flowers are the highest m the plant world because 
they can live and grow, and make and scatter the most seed under 
the hardest conditions. They are not at all concerned about being 
useful to men. Nearly one-eighth of all the plants on the globe are 
composites, but many of them are troublesome weeds. The daisy, 


174 


LITTLE LION TOOTH AND ITS COUSINS 


the aster and the chrysanthemum have been improved into beautiful 
garden flowers, and the lettuce and endive into salad plants. 

The whole insect world seems to help these composite flowers. 
Bees and wasps and flies and beetles visit them. Moths suck their 
honey by night. They have enemies, too. Grasshoppers eat their 
leaves. Crickets and beetles lay eggs on them. Caterpillars bore 
tunnels down golden-rod stems. The aphis, or plant louse, sucks 
their juices. But the ant, the red spider, the insect-eating birds, 
and toads and frogs find a thicket of golden-rods and asters a fine 
hunting ground, and destroy these enemies. On the strong, weedy 
stems a tiny wasp builds a gray paper house, and under the plant 
are to be found bumble bee nests and the cocoon cradles of many 
insects. 

The composite plants are little books of nature. You could 
spend a long season finding out all the interesting things they could 
tell you. See Compositae, Dandelion, Daisy, Aster, Chrysan¬ 
themum, Goldenrod, Thistle. Plate, Volume II, page 686. 


175 


A “good luck” family 


III. A “GOOD LUCK” FAMILY 

Did you ever find a four-leafed clover? It’s good luck to find 
one. With a four-leafed clover in your shoe you can walk right in 
among goblins and witches in any fairy story, and they can’t play 
tricks on you. Long, long ago people thought any clover leaf was a 
charm. Most clover leaves have three leaflets, and three is a lucky 
number. Besides, many of the leaflets are marked with white, 
daintily penciled horseshoes, and everybody knows a horseshoe is 
lucky. But ask any farmer and he will tell you that clover is a good 
luck plant, whether it has three leaflets or four, or is marked with 
a horseshoe or not. When you read this story you will find 
out why. 

Clover is one flower that you can always find in June, and June 
is the leafy month when there are few flowers. The Spring blossoms 
are gone, the orchards are done blooming? But there are acres and 
acres of purple-pink clover heads in blossom, all over the land, and 
more acres of the violet-purple clusters of alfalfa, a first cousin of 
the clovers. The round buttons of the white, creeping clover dot 
every green lawn, and the blood red cones of the crimson clover 
grow along many a w r ayside. 

How far one can smell a field of clover! It is a breath of the 
country as sweet as the perfume of orchards in bloom. Over a clover 
field there is always a pleasant hum of bumblebees and honey bees, 
and the glimmer of wings of gay little butterflies. When the feast 
of the clover is spread all the winged world goes to the party. Let 
us go, too. 

Look out for Mr. Bumble Bee in a clover field! Big, fuzzy, 
black and yellow worker, he isn’t thinking about you at all. But 
he blunders about, bumping into things, and he thinks human beings 
are enemies, as they very often are. He’s a good friend of the red 
clover, and he often makes his nest in the ground near the roots. 
He drops on a fine flower head and pokes his long honey-sucker mouth 
to the bottom of the flower tubes. Pull one of those flowers yourself, 
and suck the base of it. You get a sweet drop, don’t you? The 
•white clover is sweet, too, but the honey bee feeds on that. The 
tubes of the white clover are short, and the bumble bee has a regular 
fishing pole of a mouth, too long for such shallow pools of nectar. 


176 


A “good luck” family 

White clover is called the honey suckle of the grass, and bee keepers 
often plant whole fields of it. 

Because it has so many flowers on one head, you may think the 
clover is a cousin of the dandelion. It isn’t. The flowers are not 
crowded into a green vase, they just grow very close together on 
the swollen end of a stem. Pull the colored tubes from a clover 
head, and you will see that you have left behind every one some 
tiny upright threads. Those are the seed-making parts. Put a pink 
tube under a microscope and see how it widens, at the top, into 
pouting lips something like a sweet-pea blossom. Clover and Alfalfa 
are really cousins of the peas and beans and peanuts, and other 
plants that ripen their seeds in pods. You know the pods of peas 
and beans that you can split to shell out the seeds? Clover seed, 
too, grow—one or two, in a fairy pod below the tubular blossom. 
It is hidden, for the flower tube dries and turns brown on the head. 
The pod of the peanut is a woody, papery shell that grows on buried 
stems like potatoes. The seed-pods of alfalfa are coiled in snail-like 
spirals, and the teeny weeny seeds of green or yellow are exactly 
the shape of kidney beans. 

How much a sweet-pea blossom looks like a butterfly. One 
of the names of this class of plants is a long Latin word that means 
butterfly. You can always know them by the blossom, although 
some of them are low creepers and some are beautiful trees. Do 
you like liquorice candy? Liquorice is a cousin of the clover and 
peanut. It is a woody shrub sometimes called the sweet root, for 
it is from its root that the liquorice juice is made. The sensitive plant, 
whose leaves go to sleep if you touch it, is one of this family, too; 
and the indigo shrub that gives us our beautiful blue dye. Another 
very tall relation is the beautiful honey locust tree, with its clusters 
of pink butterfly blossoms. It grows in many parts of our country. 
The clovers are members of a very big, important family, aren’t 
they? They are all great honey makers. 

All of these butterfly-blossomed, pod-seeded plants have strong, 
fibrous roots. There is a central root-stock with many branches, 
and a bush of rootlets, like a leafless shrub turned upside down and 
buried. This gives them a strong hold on the soil and many water 
suckers. Their stems are very zig-zaggy, branching in a twisty kind 
of way, as if they didn’t quite know whether to be vines or not. The. 
white clover, and the dear little Shamrock of Ireland, spring from 
creeping, vine-like stems. Many peas and beans climb on poles, or 


177 


A “good luck” family 

on other plants like cornstalks. Alfalfa is more bushy, and with 
smaller leaflets than the clovers. The acacia, the sensitive plant, 
and locust have long, feather-veined fern-like leaves. 

Beside the bees, the pod-seeded plants have another animal 
friend. He lives in the ground, on the roots. He is so small you 
can not see him except with a very good microscope. But you can 
find the house he lives in with hundreds of his family. Find a fine 
field clover or alfalfa plant, and soak the ground around it with 
water until you make a very deep mud puddle. Then pull, loosening 
the root gently, so as to get as many rootlets as possible. Wash 
the earth away from the root in a tub of water. All over the root- 
fibres you will find funny little brown wart-like knots and swellings. 

Those knots are the houses of little animals called bac-te'ria. 
This is how they help the plants. All kinds of plants need a food 
called nitrates. There is some in most soils, and some is supplied by 
animal manures that you often see spread on gardens in the spring. 
In the air is a great deal of gas called nitrogen. The leaves of plants 
cannot use that gas. They send it back to the roots. Clovers and 
other pod-seeded plants have these little animal friends that fasten 
themselves in colonies on the roots, and use that nitrogen gas to 
make nitrates. So those little swellings are really nitrate factories 
full of busy workers. They make more nitrates than the plants 
they grow on can use, and leave some in the soil for wheat and other 
crops. So, you see, the clovers are soil-makers, and bring good cro^s 
and good luck to the farmers. 

If you see pussy prowling around a clover field, leave her alone. 
Pussy eats field mice. Field mice eat baby bumble bees. If the 
mice were so many that they ate all the bumble bees, the clover 
would have no help in making seeds. Then bossy cow would have 
no clover to eat, and couldn’t make ds good milk. And we wouldn’t 
have as sweet yellow butter to put on our bread. 

Isn’t that just like the house that Jack built? Dear, dear, Dut 
this is a nice, mixed-up, friendly old world, where everybody helps 
everybody else, and has a fine time doing it. 

Sometimes, clover will not grow in a field at all. Men who make 
a study of plants found out that this was because there were no 
nitrates in the soil, and no nitrate making bacteria to help the plants 
make them. So the farmer’s department of our big country, in 
Washington City, began to hatch bacteria in liquid baths. Cotton 
is soaked in this bath and dried. This cotton is sent to farmers who 


178 


A “good luck” family 

ask for it, together with some food the little animals like. The cotton 
and the food are put into a barrel of water. In a few days the water 
turns milky, and is then swarming with the little creatures. 

The farmer lowers a sack full of clover, alfalfa, peas or bean seeds 
into the water, dries and sows them. The bacteria begin to grow 
as soon as the seeds do, and set up their little nitrate factories on 
the roots. If you can’t grow sweet peas in your garden, or white 
clover on your lawn, ask Uncle Sam in Washington to help you. He 
will send you some of the cotton, and you can use the milky water 
for sprinkling. 

It isn’t a bit of use to sow these bacteria with any other kind 
of plants than pod-bearers. And here’s another funny thing. When 
clovers and their cousins are grown in soil rich in nitrates, they do 
not take the trouble to make this plant food at all. You may pull 
up many a fine clover or alfalfa plant and find no swellings on the 
roots at all. 

You have heard the story of Bruce and the spider, haven’t you? 
No matter how many times the web is torn down the spider spins 
another one. Some animals will give up, if disturbed too often. So 
will some plants. The clovers are like spiders. They try, try again 
to grow seeds. If left alone they ripen their seeds from the first 
blossoms and the plant die's. But if clover is cut when in blossom, 
but before the seeds ripen, it will spring up and blossom again, and 
even the third time. Farmers can cut two and even three crops of 
clover from one field, in a single season. Then, if he lets the seed 
ripen, the alfalfa and some clovers, will re-seed the field, or spring 
up from the roots the next season. 

It really seems as if those wise little clover heads might be 
nodding in the wind as if to say that they knew a thing or two, 
doesn’t it? (See Legume, Fruit, Clover, Shamrock, Alfalfa, 
Pea, Peanut, Bean, Indigo, Liquorice, Locust, Nitrogen¬ 
gathering crops.) 


THE BONNY BRIAR BUSH 


179 


IV. THE BONNY BRIAR BUSH 

It was a little bird that told how the wild rose came to be growing 
in the wild garden. 

There wasn’t another wild rose anywhere in the neighborhood. 
Roses are something like human babies. They do not like the smoky 
air of cities. You can coax garden roses to bloom in front door 
yards and parks, but wild roses stay outside, where the air is pure 
and sweet. 

When winter came, and the gray weed-stalks rustled their dry 
seed-cases in the wind, the rose seemed the only live thing in the 
waste place. Its thorny, leafless canes were a bright red-brown. 
Its scarlet seed-hips glowed like little coals of fire above the first 
November snow. The rose-hips were as big and heavy and red as 
the little apples of the hawthorn tree. And they were so firmly 
fastened to the woody stems that the wind could not loosen them. 
Some foolish robins, who had stayed in the north too long, made a 
breakfast of the rose-hips and started south for the winter. 

Birds have perfect little mills of stomachs for grinding worms 
and seeds, but rose-hips are so thick and hard that it must take the 
birds days to digest them. The seeds inside are like little stones 
wrapped in spiny hairs, so they pass right through the birds unharmed, 
and are planted far away. In this way the wild rose has been scattered 
by birds over many parts of the northern world, from very cold 
countries almost to the hot tropics, and far up mountain sides. Some 
bird had dropped rose seed in that jungle of sturdy weeds in the 
city. It took root and grew there, because it happened to fall on 
a bit of soft, rich ground near a rotting stump of scrub oak. But 
it never grew very large or bore many blossoms. 

The rose has a woody stem that grows, year after year, in rings, 
like a tree. Some people call it a rose-tree. But it is only a shrub 
or bush, the promise of a tree. The wild rose is often only a clump 
of separate, thorny canes. On them you can find the tiny leaf and 
flower buds in winter. And in the spring you can peel the thin, 
satiny bark away, and find the green layer of the new growth under it. 

In March, when the buds begin to swell, put some branches of 
the wild rose in water, in a sunny window, and watch the leaves 
unfold. They are compound leaves of five, seven or even nine oval, 


180 


THE BONNY BRIAR BUSH 


saw-notched leaflets. Where a rose leaf joins a stem, two ears or 
wings are set, giving it a broader, firmer hold. The under side of 
the leaf is furry, or even a little prickly along the mid-rib, and there 
are sharp thorns on trunk and branches. 

Thorns are curious things. They start to be leaves or branches 
but get nipped, in some way, so they turn into thorns. They are 
very useful to roses. They help the slender canes catch on supports, 
and they frighten away some enemies. Little boys and girls would 
be sure to pull too many sweet roses if it wasn’t for the scratchy 
thorns. Can you think of any other plants that have thorns? 
Thistles? No thistles have spines and prickles. A true thorn has 
wood and bark. Blackberry and raspberry briars have thorns. So 
have crabapple and hawthorn trees. Those plants, too, have five- 
petaled, rose-like, fragrant blossoms. Perhaps—but wait a minute. 
Don’t think too fast! 

The blossoms of the rose grow in clusters at the ends of the 
branches. You find there a bunch of hard green buds that seem to 
be the swollen ends of stems. The bud is solid where it joins the 
stem, but the covering of the tip is parted into five, thick, green, 
leaf-like scales that are folded around a hard center. Those scales 
are called sepals. As the bud swells, pink lines peep out between 
the sepals. Then, slowly, the sepals separate into five pointed lips 
of the solid, round flower cup below. They flare back and show five, 
broad, pink silk petals set in a fluttering rosette. 

Just five in the wild rose! Once in a long, long time you may 
find ten petals, for you know there are some plants born with a 
genius for going up higher. The rose is so beautiful, and it has such 
a sweet smell, that it has been petted and fed and helped to grow 
better, in sheltered gardens, for hundreds of years. In every country 
it was just a little different, even when wild. It was a tiny shrub 
a few inches high, in far northern places, a tall bush or a long, trailing 
vine farther south. And it has been transplanted and the pollen 
crossed, so many times, that it has been wonderfully changed. From 
the single pink, or white, or yellow blossom, the rose has grown into 
the many-petaled, many-tinted queen of the garden. 

It was easier to improve the blossom of the wild rose because, 
just inside the circle of five petals is a little forest of pollen-tipped 
threads, around the five button-topped columns in the middle. The 
rose makes more pollen than is needed to grow seeds. It has no 
honey to give to bees and butterflies. It has its pretty color, its 


THE BONNY BRIAR BUSH 


181 


sweet perfume and its pollen to attract friendly visitors. These 
pollen threads are very ready to drop their yellow dust and broaden 
into petals. And they are just as ready to turn back again. If the 
seeds of the finest, double garden roses are planted, they sometimes 
forget all their long training, and go back to the smgle-petaled 
blossom and straggling canes of the wild rose. They have to be 
grown from cuttings to keep them tamed. 

Left alone, nature might never have made one of our double 
roses of the garden. She doesn’t seem to care to make the flower 
better. All she thinks about is the seed. As the rose must depend 
upon birds to scatter her seeds, she tries to see how tempting she 
can make the fruit, so the birds will be sure to eat it. When 
the pink petals fall, the seed cup swells and closes its mouth, leaving 
those five sepal scales to turn dry and brown at the top of the red 
hip. The rose hip is too hard for some seed-eating birds to manage 
in their little insides, so one member of the rose family made the 
soft, sweet, seed-filled fruit of the blackberry. Another one made 
the raspberry. 

Yes, those plants are cousins of the rose. They have the same 
bright-barked, thorny, woody stems; the same spiny, compound 
leaves, and the many five-petaled rosette flowers, with forests of 
pollen-tipped hairs in them. In the briar berries the blossoms are 
white and the pollen dark. Down in the grass nature set the same 
white, rose-blossom on a creeping vine, and scattered the hard seeds 
on the outside of a sweet fruit, like stitches of yellow silk on a red 
satin cone—the strawberry! 

Of course, no one knows which of all the rose family came first. 
Very likely it was the little yellow-flowered cinquefoil that looks 
so much like a wild strawberry. Beside making seeds it also grows 
by runners, that strike root at the joints. So does the strawberry. 
If raspberry and blackberry canes are bent over to the ground, they 
will often strike root, and start new plants. And branches of roses, 
and many of their cousins, can be grafted on other root stocks. So 
can the branches of orchard fruit trees be grafted. 

How much the apple blossom looks like the wild rose. It has 
five pink petals set in a rosette. It has a little forest of pollen hairs, 
too. When the petals fall the seed case swells and closes at the top 
and leaves, at the flower end, five little dry, brown sepals. The 
leaves of the apple tree are furry on the under side, the bark of the 
tree is smooth and bright, and the wild apples—the hawthorns and 



182 


THE BONNY BRIAR BUSH 


crabapples have thorns. The apple tree is a very near cousin of 
the rose, nearer, very likely, than the strawberry. There are many 
varieties of wild apples in different countries—the Siberian crab- 
apple is a useful fruit in its wild state. Like the rose, the wild apple 
has been trained, fed, sheltered, transplanted, cross-pollinated and 
grafted, until there are now dozens of varieties of big juicy apples 
in our orchards. The ^ear and the ouince are near cousins of the 
rose, too. 

The wild plums and cherries are not so near. They have a 
single nut-like seed in a stony case. They grew, perhaps, in a round¬ 
about way, from the almond, and so did the peach and the apricot. 
A peach stone is pitted like the paper shell of the almond, and the 
peach seed is often mistaken for the nut of the bitter almond. 

It is the rose that gave the name to the family. Rosaceae is 
the name. Isn’t it pretty? It ought to be, for every member of 
the family makes the earth fragrant and cheerful with their bouquets 
of blossoms. The rose is so sweet, so innocent and beautiful that we 
borrow its name for little girls, as we do of the blossoms of the violet 
and the lily. In Japan, where they grow orchard trees for the 
flowers, they often call little girls plum blossom and cherry blossom. 

Every member of the rose family is like the bonny briar bush 
in disliking the smoky air of cities. They grow best in the open 
country, under the wide, blue, sunny sky, in clean earth free from 
weeds, where birds build their nests and there is a pleasant hum of 
bees. And here is a secret very few people know. You can find 
the wild rose blossom in winter. Find a beautiful rosy apple. Cut 
it across the middle. Then cut a thin slice from one half and hold 
it up to the light. You will find the five rose petals these, very plainly 
marked, in the heart of the apple. (See Rose, Strawberry, Rasp¬ 
berry, Blackberry, Apple, Pear, Quince, Almond, Plum, Cherry 
Peach, Grafting. Plate, Volume II, page 686. Pollination. 



COURTESY OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, NEW YORK STATE 


APPLE BLOSSOMS 





TREES 


PART II 


A YEAR IN THE FOREST 

Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher. —Do you remember Eagle 
Heart, the little red American boy? His home was in the forest. We 
cannot find such a beautiful forest in our country today, as the one he 
lived in. No big tree had ever been cut down, except by the beaver dam- 
builders. The Indians had only stone hatchets. They used poles and 
bark to make their wigwams and canoes. For fires they used fallen trees 
and branches and dry brush. They were careful to put out their camp 
fires, so that very few forests were burned. 

In the old world the woods had been cut over, and only the best 
timber and orchard trees replanted, for many hundreds of years. It was 
a very great wonder to white people who came to America, to see hickory, 
walnut and ash trees, oaks, maples, beeches, elms, poplars, willows, birches 
and wild fruit trees, flowering shrubs and vines, and even pines and other 
evergreen trees growing together, in the most natural and friendly way. 
In any bit of wild woodland, in any city park, and on village streets and 
lawns, you can find most of these trees, and some others that Eagle Heart 
never saw at all. White people brought the beautiful horse chestnut, and 
the tall, slim, Lombardy poplar and other trees, from their old homes. 

How many of these trees do you know? Eagle Heart knew and 
loved all the trees in his forest home. Perhaps you know several of them 
in the summer, when the leaves are on, but he knew them in every season 
of the year. He knew their height, their color, their spread of limb. He 
knew their bark, their leaves, their flowers and fruits. He knew where 
each kind of tree liked best to grow, and what animals and birds and 
insects used it for a home. And he knew the forest as a whole, in all its 
seasonal changes. 

After three hundred years of cutting down trees, we have begun to 
re-plant and protect them. Even the schools have a tree-planting or 
arbor day, so little citizens can help in the work of winning back our lost 
trees. The more you know about trees, the more you can help in this 
work. Don’t you want to know and to love them as Eagle Heart knew 
and loved them? The first thing to do is to visit trees, and make some 
pictures of them with your little kodak eyes. (See Arbor Day, Forest 
Reserve, Forest-service, Lumbering and the names of different trees.) 


183 


TREES 


PART II 

I. SPRING: “ROCKABY BABIES” 

Where do you look for flowers in the Spring, and when? Why, 
on the ground, of course, and in late April or early May. 

The Indian boy looked up, in March. He saw flowers much 
earlier than you do. The air is warmer than the ground in the early 
Spring. Before the snow goes off the red maple lights the edges of 
the woods and the banks of streams with its blood-red blossoms. 
Against the cold, gray-blue sky of March the maples look redder 
than they really are. The flowers are so small, and so crumpled and 
bunched in little tufts on the sides of twigs, that you may think 
them only the first leaves. Frost nips a good many of them. Entire 
clusters fall to the ground, sometimes on the snow. You can easily 
find and study them. 

You will find a number of tiny blossoms snuggled together, 
inside a raincoat of varnished brown scales lined with wool. The 
separate flowers are fairy cups, some with pollen pockets on little 
hairs, like clappers in bells, and others with eager arms or plumes 
stretched out asking for pollen. It takes both kinds of flowers to 
make the winged seed of the maple, and they both grow on the same 
tree. The bees get their first sweet breakfasts of the year from the 
ruby honey cups of the red maple. 

A week or two later, the Indian boy looked for the flowers of 
the rock or sugar maple. They are not so easy to see, from the 
ground, for flowers and leaves come together, and both are a pale 
yellowish green. The flowers are not bunched, and each cup hangs 
by a hair-like thread. The whole tree has a feathery, spring-like 
look that tells everyone who knows anything at all that the sweet 
sap is running up. The tree pumps up thirty or forty gallons of 
water in flowering time. The silver maple flowers early, too. Its 
blossoms are in thick short tufts of greenish white, much the color 
of the leaves. The flowers of all the maples grow on the sides of 
the twigs. The leaf-buds are at the ends. 

184 


DOGWOOD. 


HONEY LOCUST. 



PUSSY WILLOW. 


CHESTNUT. 























CHESTNUT OAK. 


RED OAK. 


WHITE OAK. 


BUR OAK. 



































spring: 


ROCKABY BABIES 


185 


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M 


The snow is still trickling away in little icy streams when the 
first willow pussies come out for an airing. You will not find them 
on the big willow trees, but on bundles of knobby switches of willow 
shrubs that grow with their little webby root feet in the water. The 
bark is a brownish-green satin, with gummy, scale-covered buds set 
at regular spaces along the slender, leafless stems. 

These scales open, and furry gray noses poke out to take note 
of the weather. If the sun is shining, the pussies slip right out and 
sit, as if with toes and tails under them, like so many maltese kittens. 
You like to rub the silken pussies on your cheek, and you almost 
expect to hear them purr. But in a few days they swell and stretch 
and bristle, like kittens with their backs up about something, until 
every gray hair shows a grain of yellow pollen under it. Shake a 
twig and see the gold dust fly! 

The big willow trees know better than to bloom so early, when 
Jack Frost nips foolish pussies. When the April sun is quite warm, 
the black willow takes the brown water-proof caps from its flower 
buds, and pushes out some catkin tails as scaly as pine cones. Each 
row of scales is dropped over the next lower one as neatly as the 
shingles on a church spire. They have no fur, for nobody needs fur 
in April. Under the scales are seed bottles with eggs in them, but 
no yellow pollen to feed them. Somewhere nearby, there is sure to 
be another black willow tree with no eggs, but with pollen catkins 
as yellow as gold. The bees visit both trees for honey, and so carry 
pollen to the eggs. The yellow tassels fall very soon, but the scaly 
ones stay on the trees awhile. By and by the seed babies under the 
scales get so big and downy that they tumble out of the nests and 
fly away. 

All the catkin bearing trees—the willows, alders, birches and 
poplars, make these feathered seeds. In April and May, the woods 
are full of flying white flakes. One poplar is called the cottonwood 
because of the snow storm of downy seeds it sets loose. The alders 
are mostly shrubs, growing with the willows along the waterways. 
Their scaly, worm-like catkins, that you can see in winter, swell into 
long feathery tassels of purple and gold. On the same bushes are 
little erect cone-catkins that bear the seeds. The birches like drier 
soil. You know these white-barked wood fairies, don’t you? The 
birches are shy, and so are their blossoms. You have to lift the 
thin scales of their catkins to find the thinner scales under them, 
and the hidden pollen. The tassel grows feathery, and the downy 


186 


spring: “rockaby babies” 

wood sprites of seeds seem to ripen and vanish in a day. The birds 
use the cottonwood and willow seeds to line their nests with down. 

A great many trees flower in April, when the wild flowers in 
the ground are just poking little green cones through the warm 
blanket of last year’s leaves. The pollen-making blossoms of the elms 
are little chimes of bells, yellowish or reddish green and, in some 
kinds, greenish purple. They have so many sturdy little yellow- 
tipped clappers that you almost expect to hear them ring. In the 
elm, as in nearly all forest trees, it takes two kinds of flowers, working 
together, to make seeds. So some of the blossoms of the elms have 
no clappers, but hairy arms that reach for pollen food. The wind 
brings it from other trees. 

The elm seed is a round, notched and fringed and double-walled 
green scale, with the seed between two layers, just like the powder 
in a toy pistol cap. The seed hang in bunches, by inch-long hairs, 
until the wind tears them loose and scatters them. At the same 
time in May, the red maple drops its two-winged seeds. They look 
very much like the thumb screws that you use to tighten bolts, 
only, of course, they are thin and green. 

Oak trees also have two kinds of flowers. One kind is a dwarf 
catkin or cone, with several double pockets full of gold-dust. The 
egg flower is a tiny pink knob. It sits away out on the end of the 
twig in a scaly cup, often snuggled up to a sister or two, like a little 
bump on a log. Its pink mouth is as wide open as a baby robin’s 
when crying for worms. It wants that pollen! You see, it is a baby 
acorn. When it gets the pollen it swallows the food, shuts its mouth 
tight, turns green, and just sits there and grows all summer. 

The acorn is really a kind of nut. And you might say that all 
of our forest nuts are made in much the same way as acorns. The 
chestnut seed-cone grows on the same twig as the pollen-catkin. As 
there are to be three nuts in one bur, it has three mouths to be fed 
with pollen, all set in one prickly cup. 

The black walnut doesn’t bloom until May. It’s catkin has 
forty pockets of gold-dust, each one a sort of treasure shelf under a 
green scale. But the nut blossom is no bigger than a grain of wheat. 
You have to look sharp to find it. Two or three of them often grow 
together, on the tip of the branch, after the leaves come out. Small 
as they are, each has two mouths open for pollen. Why two, for 
one nut? Crack a walnut, a hickory nut, an English walnut or a 
pecan. These nuts are in two, fat, wrinkled leaves, with a woody 


SPRING : 


ROCKABY BABIES 


187 


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partition between them. But they are joined across the middle 
like Siamese twins. 

You can make a very close guess as to what the fruit of many 
trees will look like by studying the blossoms that hold the little 
eggs. You know the sweet, three-cornered little nuts of the beech 
tree, don’t you? The squirrels know them. Three nuts are fitted 
together in the husk, so, in the egg blossom, which is just a tiny 
grain, there are three little, three-cornered mouths to be fed. The 
pollen blossom is a globe-shaped bell, with a dozen powder-tipped 
threads. 

What would you think the blossom of the wild grape should 
look like? A many-branched cluster of flowers, for one thing. The 
flowers have five petals and five pollen threads, and a many-celled 
egg cup for the many seeds of the grape. But the flower petals do 
not flare open. They are almost closed into little grape shaped globes 
around the seed-making parts. The flower stalk, with ever so many 
branches and separate flowers on it, may be only an inch or two 
long, but it is a whole baby bunch of grapes. 

Do you notice that the grape has both of its flowers, the seed 
cup and the pollen threads, set in one blossom? This is the first 
one of the kind we have found. The catkin bearers, the maples, 
the elms and all the nut trees have two kinds of flowers. One is a 
pollen maker that falls as soon as the yellow food is scattered. The 
other is an egg blossom that is fed, and stays on the tree awhile to 
ripen the seeds. In the grape, the two flowers are brought together, 
and set in a five-petaled cup, or ball. 

The same is true of the wild crabapple and hawthorn trees of 
the woods. Plants with these united flowers are called crown-bearers. 
They are of a higher order than those that have to make two kinds 
of blossoms to grow seed. The crabapple blossom is so large that 
you can find out just how it is put together. The stem ends of all 
the parts are packed in a solid green cup that swells out on the end 
of the stalk. In that cup are little eggs in five nests. Growing up 
from the nests are five, hollow, white columns with moist, spongy 
buttons on top. Around these columns is circle after circle of yellow- 
tipped pollen threads, as many as thirty of them. And outside of 
these is the rosette of five pink petals, held up by the five green sepal 
scales, or flaring lips of the egg cup. 

Bees brush the yellow pollen onto the white columns, and the 
grains of gold-dust send hair-like roots down to the little seed eggs. 


1X8 


SPRING : 


ROCKABY BABIES 


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Then the petals fall, the seed cup closes and swells, the sepals dry 
into five little brown scales at the flower end. The apple grows big 
and juicy, and ripens brown seeds in five satin-horn lined nests in 
the heart. 

The crown-bearers do not use their own pollen, but exchange 
it with flowers on other trees of the same kind. Such a flutter of 
silken, scented petticoats; such a buzzing of bees and hovering of 
butterflies as goes on in those huge bouquets of pink and white! 
Beside what we call the wild fruit trees—all trees and low plants, 
too, bear fruits, for fruits are seeds, you know—there are the honey 
locusts, the horse chestnut and buckeye trees, and many crown¬ 
flowering shrubs, in American forests. 

The honey locusts hang out long clusters of pink butterfly 
blossoms, like nosegays of little sweet peas. The honey bees go 
frantic with delight over them. In June, the horse chestnut gives 
its second surprise party of the year. Don’t miss that for anything. 
You can find these handsome trees in lawns, parks and along village 
streets. 

The swollen cone of the horse chestnut flower bud is in the heart 
of a cluster of five-fingered leaves, often a foot long and broad. The 
big white blossoms are on erect, many-branched spikes, so they form 
a giant bouquet. Each blossom is a fluttery, ruffly cup, penciled 
and dotted with purple and yellow. They are deep honey pots, into 
which bees tumble, head first, jostling the hanging pollen pockets 
and bumping into seed column tips. When the petals fall in a little 
snow storm, the seed grow in husks, into dark brown nuts, much 
like big, flattened acorns. The horse chestnut is a foreign cousin of 
the American buckeye tree. The Ohio buckeye that gives its name 
to the state, has clusters of smaller greenish flowers, and the sweet 
buckeye long, narrow, yellow flowers in green cups. 

Under the lowest limbs of the tall forest trees are the flowering 
shrubs. The wild briar berries have clusters of white rose-like 
blossoms. There are bouquets of white-flowered dogwoods, pink 
sprays of red-bud, and yellow torches of the spice bush. The elder 
shrubs have showy parasols of tiny white blossoms, and the laurel 
makes banks and drifts of pink snow on rough hillsides. 

This is the forest in flower, as the Indian boy knew it. Do you 
wonder that he loved it? If you learn to know it and love it as he 
did, it will call you out every day from March to June. 


summer: 


IN THE TREE TOPS 


189 


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II. SUMMER: “IN THE TREE TOPS” 

Summer is the leafy season. But the time to begin to study 
leaves is in the early spring. On nearly all trees the leaf comes as 
soon as the blossom falls. The first leaves are very small, and they 
are not green but pink, red, yellow, gray or white. They have been 
wrapped up in bed clothes all winter. It takes several days of warm 
sunshine for them to turn green and to grow up. The leaf of the red 
maple tree, true to its name, is red. On the sugar maple it is a yellow- 
green, on the silver maple a shining green-white. When they grow 
to full size these maple leaves all have much the same form. In 
different members of a plant family there is a resemblance, as in a 
human family. You can learn to call each one by its “given,” as 
well as by its family name, by looking out for the differences. 

When you see a tree with a leaf that would lie in a three to five 
inch circle, but that is cut down part way into five lobes, you would 
be safe in thinking that tree a maple. The lobes of the red maple 
are sharply notched and parted. In the sugar or rock maple, the 
leaf lobes and partings are more rounded. It is a darker, smoother 
leaf, too, and grows more thickly on an evenly balanced, round- 
headed tree. The red maple has straggling branches, and the leaves 
are thin so light sifts through them, giving the tree an airier look 
than any other maple. 

The leaf of the silver maple is smaller, a sage green above, a 
cottony white below. It does not sift light, but seems to reflect it 
like a mirror, as the white underside turns up in every breeze. There 
are other maples, but these are the best known. The leaves of all 
trees and of low plants, too, are alike in being brighter and smoother 
on the upper side. The underside is paler and rougher, and the 
veins stand out more plainly. This is because the upper side is a 
sort of rain and dust coat and sun-umbrella, for the breathing pores 
underneath. It is the lower side of a leaf that is the most interesting 
to study under a microscope. 

All of the willows have long, slender leaves. Each leaf is a 
narrow, thin, delicately veined blade that grows by itself, and alter¬ 
nately, along a slender stem, making a sort of feathered branch. 
The pussy willow leaves are a bright green. The black willow leaf 
is broader, saw-notched, and it tapers toward both stem and tip 


190 


summer: “in the tree tops” 

like a canoe. It is bright green above and silvery underneath. The 
leaf of the white willow is a gray green lined with silver, and it droops 
from yellow stems. The crack willow, whose twigs snap so easily, 
has a green leaf lined with a waxy coating. The weeping willow has 
long, sad, gray “weeping” leaves. * 

The leaves of the alders are darker and broader than those of 
the willows, and the undersides are hairy. The poplars all have 
broad, heart-shaped leaves of emerald green satin, many of them 
silvery underneath. They are always in motion, so they shimmer 
in the sun in quite a dazzling way. The tall, slim, Lombardy poplars 
seem robed in dark green, flowing satin. 

After the maples and willows, very likely you know oak trees 
best. The oak leaf is very irregularly shaped, like the oak tree. It 
is a long, oval or pear-shaped leaf, usually narrowest at the stem 
end, and is deeply notched and lobed. It is a strong, tough leaf as 
glossy above as if varnished, and rough underneath, with woody veins 
standing out like a net-work of cords. The scarlet, the red and the 
black oaks have about five, sharply notched lobes with broad partings, 
and each lobe is often notched again. The white oak has seven or 
nine narrow, rounded lobes, with very deep rounded partings cut 
down almost to the midrib. The bur oak has five or seven broad 
round lobes and narrow partings. In the swamp oak the leaf is 
deeply and irregularly scalloped. The chestnut oak leaf is oval with 
shallow scallops, and the smaller live oak leaf has wavy edges. 

The oaks ring all the changes from many sharp, almost spine- 
tipped lobes to wavy edges. And they are very puzzling, for they 
are not all alike even on one tree, nor in different seasons. The best 
way to be sure of an oak tree is to study the acorns. Oaks can be 
as tricky as they like about leaves, but they stick each to its own 
pattern, in making acorns. So, in the fall, when the acorns drop, 
you can study the oaks again. 

After these tantalizing oak leaves, it is always such a comfort 
to turn to the American elm. That tree can always be depended 
upon to make a certain leaf. Along its high branches, that curve 
over in great plumes, the elm sets an oval or egg-shaped leaf about 
three inches long, narrowest at the tip and just a little pointed. The 
elm leaf grows singly, on opposite sides of twigs, each a little advanced 
beyond the last, and making a neat, feathered spray. The leaf is 
strong, saw-notched, short stemmed and firmly set, smooth above, 
rough underneath. From the midrib the veins slant upward, making 


summer: 


IN THE TREE TOPS 


191 


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evenly spaced broad V’s, about a quarter of an inch apart from stem 
to tip. You might think these veins were laid off with a ruler. Isn’t 
that a satisfactory kind of leaf? You could almost draw it without 
seeing it, couldn’t you? 

The leaf of the beech tree is something like that of the elm, 
but thinner, softer, often fringed as well as saw-notched along the 
edges, and it. is irregularly net-veined, not strongly feather-veined 
like the elm. The tree, too, is so different that you could not mis¬ 
take them. The beech is a broad, low-branching tree, leafed all over 
as heavily as the maples. 

The orchard fruit trees, wild and tame, all have rose-like leaves. 
Apple tree leaves are a soft green above, lighter and furry under¬ 
neath. They grow in tufts around the fruit and along the stems. 
The cherry leaf is smaller, darker, brighter, and more blade-like than 
the apple leaf. The foliage of the pear tree is larger and thicker; 
of a peach a long, slender, bright green blade like a very large, rather 
curly willow leaf. On the thorny canes of the briar berries are broad, 
spiny compound leaves that tell very plainly their kinship to the 
rose. In open spaces of the woods, the wild grape spreads its tent 
of broad, deep lobed and toothed leaves. They are very glossy and 
dark green above, hairy and pale underneath. And among them 
are curling tendrils and bunched clusters of little green fruit. 

In every forest you will see several trees that have what are 
called pinnate leaves. Such leaves have three or more pairs of leaf¬ 
lets set on opposite sides of a central stem, with a single leaf at the 
tip. So, in a pinnate leaf, there are always an odd number of leaflets, 
five or seven in the rose, about nine in the leaf of the white ash tree. 
This is a beautiful shade tree, of hard wood, ranking with the rock 
maple and the elm. The leaf is quite nine or ten inches long, and 
the leaflets long oval blades very bright and clean. The mountain 
ash, or rowan tree, has as long a leaf but with a greater number of 
narrow leaflets, giving the tree a feathery, almost fern-like look. 
The honey locust, too, has this feathered leaf of many drooping leaflets. 

Many of the nut trees have these beautiful drooping pinnate 
leaves. The black walnut is hung all over its high crown with long 
plume-like leaves with from seventeen to twenty-five slender leaflets. 
The leaf of the butternut, or white walnut tree, has from seven to 
nine. The horse chestnut, buckeye and hickory trees have palmate 
leaves. That is, the broad oval leaflets are all set around the tip 
of a common leaf stem, spreading in a circle, like the ribs of a palm 


192 


SUMMER: 


IN THE TREE TOPS 


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leaf fan. The largest, middle leaflet of the horse chestnut leaf is often 
ten or twelve inches long, and four or five wide. 

It is a wonderful thing to see a horse chestnut burst into leaf 
in April. This tree has thick stems and big, scaly leaf buds like 
little pine cones. The outer scales are brown, and water-and-frost- 
proofed with gum. Inside is layer after layer of green scales each 
lapping over the next. Inside of all these is a tender, pink, leafbud 
baby, snuggled in a blanket of fleecy white wool. Now watch and 
see one of these undone, for all the leaves of all trees come out in much 
the same way. You can study Mother Nature’s way of wrapping up 
and taking out her leaf-bud babies in the horse chestnut best, because 
its buds are so large. One by one the cover scales are turned back 
as the baby stretches too big for its cradle. Then, on a warm day, 
five crumpled pink toes wriggle through the fleecy blanket. Sud¬ 
denly, the bed clothes are kicked off, the pink toes spread into five 
leaflets and the whole tree tumbles, green in a day, into the sunlight. 
But it takes the leaves days and days to grow up. 

The paper or canoe birches have the prettiest fairy-like leaf in 
the world! It is a broad oval, three or four inches long, with finely 
toothed edges. The pointed tip is often curved over a little, in a 
graceful, tricksy way. This is a way many leaves have of being a 
little out of balance. If you fold any leaf along the midrib you will 
find the two sides are never exactly alike. This is just as it is in the 
faces of little boys and girls. One cheek has the dimple, one eyebrow 
is lifted or eyelid drooped more than the other. It is these little 
things that keep any two faces, even of twins, from being exactly 
like any other, and gives ever” face what we call character, or 
individuality. 

The birch leaf has this little tilt at the tip, now on one side, 
now on the other, with a little hollow cut out below it. A thin, 
fiuttery, transparent leaf, scantily scattered over the lace-like twigs 
of the slender white-barked trees, it glances like a butterfly and 
sifts sunlight. A group of birches always have a dryad, wood-fairy 
look. Step softly when you come upon them in some shy retreat 
in a forest. They look as if a snapping twig might startle them 
into taking flight. 


AUTUMN: 


WHEN THE WIND BLOWS 


193 


u 




III. AUTUMN: “WHEN THE WIND BLOWS” 

What is it the magician says in fairy stories, when he makes 
the most surprising things happen? 

“Presto, change!” and he claps his hands. 

Jack Frost is this wonder worker of the forest. After a still, 
sharp night in October, a hundred things seem to have happened all 
at once. The ground is white with frozen dew. The trees are great 
torches of gold and red. They blaze all the brighter because the sky 
is veiled with a violet haze. 

It is the maples that first light up our woods with these flickering 
fires. No country of the old world has trees that make such a 
wonderful color show as our maples. Their leaves are never of one 
tint, but are mottled and shaded, from lemon yellow to orange, flame- 
red and crimson. You know the thin-leafed red maple sifts sunlight. 
To look up through one, in the fall, is like looking through a splendid 
stained glass window of a church. 

The oaks show no yellow, and the leaves are of a strong solid 
color. But different varieties of oaks give them a range of all the 
reds from scarlet to wine, and then add warm browns and bronze 
greens. The elms and beeches are in russet yellows, the birches and 
poplars pure gold, the nut trees yellow. On every brook the willow 
leaves float like little fleets of sunny canoes. The fairy craft drift 
down stream, swirl over eddies and go under. 

Below the boughs of the tall trees, all these colors are repeated 
in the shrubs and vines. The sumac is a burning bush with torch- 
cones of seeds. The broad leaves of the grape vine turn to bronze. 
The berry briars are dark as the wine oaks. The big, smooth sassafras 
leaves are mottled in orange and flame, like the maples. There are 
notes of purple in the clusters of wild grapes, in the leaves of the 
alders and some of the ashes; and of scarlet in the seed hips of roses, 
the clustered berries of the mountain ash and of the bittersweet vine. 
Below all these the foot-high seedlings of the forest show the colors 
of the parent trees, among the brown of frost-bitten ferns and fallen 
leaves. 

There is no hurry about anything. The autumn trees often take 
three or four weeks of Indian summer to strip their boughs for winter. 
The leaves drift down, silently, like great colored butterflies. Whole 


194 autumn: “when the wind blows” 

troupes of them dance in little gusts of wind. On frosty nights the 
nuts drop with soft patterings. Squirrels slip, brown and gray 
shadows, over the bright carpets, laying in their winter stores. The 
song birds take their last meals of seeds and cocoon babies and fly 
southward. 

October is the time to study the fruits of forest trees. Many 
of the trees—the willows, poplars, elms and red maples drop their 
seeds in the spring. The rock maple keeps its seed until frost, and 
so do all the nut trees and the wild orchard fruits. All the maple 
seeds have two thin, flat green wings, like a thumb screw, an inch or 
more across. In the thickened bases of the two wings, two seeds 
lie coiled. You can peel away the thin, paper-like covering and find 
them. And you can learn how they begin to grow by pulling up the 
smallest seedlings of the red maples. 

Acorns lie thick under the oak trees. They will tell you the 
names of the parent trees. But keep very still and the squirrels will 
tell you some things. The gray and brown squirrels and the little 
striped chipmunks will pass some acorns by, but will pick up others 
eagerly and scamper away with them. Up the trees they go, or into 
hollow logs or holes in the ground, to their hidden store-rooms. They 
like the sweet acorns of the white, the chestnut and the live oaks. 
They have to be very hungry before they eat the bitter nuts of the 
black, the red and the bur oaks. How can they tell them apart? 

Very likely all acorns look alike to you. They all have a shiny, 
brown shell with a white “eye” where they grew fast to the cups. 
The acorn of the white oak has a very rough, mossy cup much shorter 
than the pointed nut. The bur oak is often called the over-cup oak 
because its mossy, fringed cup covers quite two-thirds of the round 
acorn. In the live oak of our southern states, the cup tapers back 
to the twig, broadens at the top and almost encloses the acorn. The 
red oak has a shallow cup, more like a saucer, the scaly ring just 
clasping the long oval acorn. The scarlet oak acorn is top shaped, 
with a point for spinning, and is half covered with a shaggy cap of 
a cup, like a tam-o-shanter. There are other oaks, with acorns that 
are still different, but these are the best known. 

Chestnuts are very near relatives of the oaks. The cups are 
closed burs, very stiff and woody, with prickly thorns. You have 
to let Jack Frost open them for you. He can split them into four 
leaves lined with brown velvet, and make you a present of three dark 
brown, flattened nuts with silky tails. They are very sweet when 


AUTUMN: 


WHEN THE WIND BLOWS 


195 


<< 


f ) 


roasted by a winter fire. The squirrel is out before you are after 
chestnuts. Did you know he often peels his nuts, stripping the horny 
shell away, before storing it in his high pantry. He puts away chin¬ 
quapins, those tiny American cousins of the chestnuts. He likes the 
little three-cornered, thin-shelled beechnuts that grow, three together, 
in a prickly bur. He gathers hazel nuts, too, picking them from the 
flaring, clustered husks that grow on low bushes. 

Would you think the squirrels could manage the hard shelled 
walnuts, butternuts and hickory nuts? The black walnut has a thick, 
stony, wrinkled, black shell, and it is buried in a tough green husk 
with no partings. You have to let these husks dry a little and turn 
brown. Then you pound them off. They stain your fingers brown. 
The butternut is a white walnut. Our grandmothers used to dye 
homespun cloth brown with butternut husks. The hickory nut is 
smooth, white and a thinner shelled and sweeter kerneled nut than 
its cousins. It pops out of a thick, four-parted, smooth husk. The 
pecan, a very high bred southern cousin of the walnut, leaves its 
wide-open husk on the tree awhile, when the nut falls. It has a thin, 
pale, smooth, oval shell and a fine, sweet kernel. 

You can easily prove that all these nuts, and the English walnut, 
are very near relations by cracking them. All of them have two fat, 
wrinkled seed-leaves, joined through a hole in the middle of a thin 
partition wall. The leaves are not twin nuts. They are just the two 
parts of one seed. You know beans and pease seed have two leaves 
that split when the plant begins to grow. So has the acorn, the 
chestnut, the buckeye, and the seeds of all plants with net-veined 
leaves. The forest nuts are the only ones that build partition walls 
between their seed leaves that the writer ever found. Do you know 
of any others? 

How did the nuts get their hard shells, and their tough or prickly 
or mossy husks and cups? Just as the apple got its rosy skin, its 
sweet pulp and its horn-lined seed nests. The shell of a nut is like 
the seed nest of the apple. It is the hardened covering of the baby 
egg in the blossom. The cup or husk of the acorn, is really the twig 
on which the blossom grew. A plant can grow stem and root and 
bark and leaf and flower, all so very different. So it isn’t hard to 
take a twig bud and turn it into a thorn on the rose, or a tendril on 
the grape vine, or a cup or husk on a nut tree. Nature is always 
turning these sleight-of-hand tricks, making the most unexpected 
things out of anything she happens to have in stock. 


196 


AUTUMN: 


WHEN THE WIND BLOWS 


<< 


> / 


For two or three weeks our autumn woods are draped in splendor, 
and dropping their ripened fruits for squirrels and birds and little 
boys and girls to find. Then comes a gale of wind and cold rains. 
Suddenly, the trees are bare, the birds are gone, the squirrels asleep 
in their cosy store-rooms. The baby leaves and branches and blossoms 
for next year are tucked up snugly in tiny brown buds, all over the 
trees. You can find them in early winter, just above the scaly marks 
left by the leaves that have fallen. Every one of them is a little 
prize package, rain-and-frost-proofed in spicy gums and fleecy blankets. 

Isn’t it wonderful that these tender babies, some no bigger than 
grains of wheat, will be safe and warm even when the ice is thick on 
the rivers and ponds? Winds that break off great limbs of trees and 
almost blow you off your feet, will merely rock these babies in their 
cradles. And under the blankets of leaves and snow, the fallen seeds 
will lie asleep, as snugly as Johnny Bear in his cave. The first warm 
days of spring they will wake up, yawn so wide that they will split 
their shells, stretch their leaf-arms up to the sun, and dig their root- 
toes into the soft earth. 


WINTER I 


THE CRADLES WILL ROCK 


197 


< i 


1 1 


IV. WINTER: “THE CRADLES WILL ROCK” 

Who says there is no use in going to the forests again until 
spring? What a funny mistake! It’s worth while going if only for 
the pictures in black and white. Many people, who know a great 
deal about art, like black and white pictures best. They like draw¬ 
ings in crayon, charcoal and ink; prints from etched plates, and fine 
photographs. The woods, in winter, against gray skies and snowy 
earth, are delicate etchings. The boy with a kodak, then, is lucky. 
He can make a whole album of pictures. 

Every tree has a character of its own, just as every person has. 
Don’t you know the members of your family and many friends by 
the way they stand and sit, and carry their heads, and swing their 
arms when walking? You don’t always need to see their faces.- 
You can learn to know trees in that way, too. Their character seems 
to come out more sharply when they have no soft, colored drapery 
of leaves to hide them. 

The oak tree looks as if its shape was wrought of iron. No two 
oaks are alike, but all look as if hammered out on some giant forge. 
Its stout trunk, covered with deeply furrowed black bark, is rooted 
like a rock. Often it is buttressed, or braced, by great ridges that 
slope away to outstanding roots. It supports a great weight of thick 
limbs, irregular and crooked. Clear up to the knotted twigs, and 
tough brown leaves that often hang on all winter, the oak has a 
stubborn look. It dares the winter winds to do their worst. And 
it looks so old, so wise, such a scarred hero of a thousand fights. 
The old Norse sea kings and the brave English once worshiped the 
oak tree. It gave them ship timbers that could stand the strain of 
wind and waves. Many ancient peoples thought dryads, or wood 
spirits, lived in oak trees. 

The elm tree was believed to bless and protect a church or 
household. There have been many wonder stories written about 
the elm. It’s black trunk, with the bark in deep, vertical ridges, 
often springs forty feet in the air, straight as a pine, before it branches. 
Then, from the top, the long limbs sweep, like plumes from a vase. 
A double row of them makes a high arch across a very wide street. 
It was often planted for a lucky birth tree when a baby was born. 
The baby grew up before the elm did, but the tree lived long after 


198 


WINTER: 


U 


THE CRADLES WILL ROCK 


»> 


he was gone. His children and grandchildren played under it while 
it was still a young tree. Elms and oaks often live for two or three 
hundred years and get their names into history. (See Elm.) 

Isn’t it wonderful that trees keep a record of their birthdays? 
Every year’s growth is a thin layer of green that, as it hardens into 
wood, is plainly marked in a ring. The rings are bound together 
with rays like wheel spokes. When lumber is sawed and polished, 
the ring and ray marks come out in wavy lines, in delicate pencilings, 
in curls and “eyes,” and color bands, very true to type in nearly all 
trees. So, in a chair or floor or door casing, you can learn to know 
the different woods. Grown people know many of these woods in 
houses and furniture. They know just what each kind of tree is 
good for. 

The Indians knew a great deal about woods, although they could 
not cut down trees. “Give me of your bark, oh birch tree,” sang 
Hiawatha. He wanted the white, unbroken bark of the big, paper 
birch tree to cover his canoe with. “Give me of your wood, oh ash 
tree,” he sang. He used the tough saplings of the white ash for the 
frame of his canoe and for his hunting bow. He knew the best fire¬ 
woods, too. He knew that a hard beech log would hold fire all night, 
that birch splinters made the best kindling, that pine-knots blazed 
up for story telling, that wild apple wood glowod w r ith rosy flames 
like its own pink blossoms. 

But we are forgetting our winter pictures in black and white. 
There are other trees with white, or silvery gray bark as w r ell as the 
birches. Some willows and poplars, the silver maple and the syca¬ 
more, a kind of maple or plane tree, have them. And one birch has 
a yellow bark. You can ahvays tell the birches in winter by the 
short, brown or dark gray cross-markings on the bark, and by the 
slender branches and twigs. The willows have many small, drooping 
twigs but large branches. They often have long, horizontal roots 
that push the earth up in ridges, and a little forest of switch-like 
shoots around their feet. The poplars are much like the willows, 
but their branches are more erect, often growing in so close to the 
shaft-like trunk as to make these the slenderest trees, except the 
pines. Switch-like shoots grow about the poplars, and even on the 
trunks. 

In the winter the bark of orchard fruit trees are w^arm reds and 
browns and purplish grays, very bright and clean, like wild rose 
canes. The trunk of an old apple tree may be gray and scaly, but 


winter: “the cradles will rock*’ 199 

the higher branches and twigs are bright. It has a low, rounded 
head. Its stout branches spring from a short trunk, making that 
comfortable “crotch” where you like to sit with a story book in the 
summer. The crabapple is small, thorny, flat-topped, a twisted 
witch of a tree. The pear is tall, slim, with a few thick limbs growing 
upward and close together. The cherry is wine-red. Its outer bark 
easily peels in circular bands. 

The black walnut tree has a towering trunk that branches high 
in a beautiful crown. Its bark is as black as the oak and elm, and 
sharply ridged like the shell of its nut. The butternut or white walnut 
has a grayish bark and high, horizontal branches. The hickory is a 
tall, spreading tree with a gray bark that breaks away in long strips. 
For this reason it is often called the shag bark. The twigs are a 
warm, yellowish brown, with big varnished leaf buds. 

The beech tree has low-hung, wide, spreading branches. Its 
trunk is a smooth bluish-gray column. Nothing that grows under 
the beech gets enough sunlight, so the ground is often quite bare. 
The beech, too, like many heavy trees, braces itself with horizontal 
roots. It is the best umbrella in the world, in a storm, and it is 
thought to be the safest shelter, for it is seldom or never struck by 
lightning. 

Bare maples are always graceful. The rock maple is a sturdy, 
compact tree, with its smooth trunk and rounded head. The red 
maple has a free, bold way of branching like its five-notched leaf. 

Winter is the time of the year for finding bird’s nests, for the 
owners no longer need them. The oriole often hangs its purse of 
a nest, seventy-five feet in the air, from the limb of an elm. Robins 
and blue birds are fond of apple trees and maples. Little wood owls 
like the hollows of oaks. The crow picks out a lofty perch in a cotton¬ 
wood or pine tree to survey this interesting world. You can find 
holes the woodpeckers have drilled to drag out grubs, and cocoons 
tucked away in the ridges of the bark. They hold the baby butter¬ 
flies waiting for spring. You can tell, too, if a tree is injured or 
dying. Fungi, or toad stool growths of white or orange fluted ridges, 
creeping thread moulds, and dry rot around hollows, mean trouble, 
and decay. 

Sometimes, when the xndian boy ±ay in his wigwam, on a still, 
cold, winter night, he heard the trees crack. He could not have 
known what had happened. But now, when sound trees are cut up 
for lumber, they are often found cracked, across the middle or around 


200 


WINTER: 


THE CRADLES WILL ROCK 


a 


M 


a growth ring. The frost does not harm the smallest leaf-bud baby 
in its cradle, but it often grips and breaks the hearts of big trees. 

Winter is the best time for studying the cone-bearers. Perhaps 
you call all of these trees pines. Many people do. Only one of their 
family is a pine, and you would never pick that one out for a Christmas 
tree. It has long, stiff, needle-like leaves that grow in clusters of 
from two to five. The clusters grow so close together that they 
spread in fan-like sprays. The pines, of which there are several 
varieties, have upright cones of thick, over-lapping, woody scales. 

Pines, spruces, firs and hemlocks are alike in having cones and 
needle-like leaves. Most of them have tall, tapering stems, like 
ships’ masts and telegraph poles. The spruces and firs make the 
prettiest Christmas trees. The spruce has inch-long needles that 
bristle all around the stem. In the fir, the needles are flat. They 
grow on only two sides of the stem, and they slant upward. Some¬ 
times the under side of the leaves are pale and shining. Then it is 
called the silver fir. The cones of the two trees are much alike, long, 
slender, with thin, close-set scales. But the spruce cone droops, 
while the fir cone stands erect. Hemlock needles are short and flat, 
too, but they lie straight out like the fronds of a feather. The hem¬ 
lock cones are shorter, with bristling, parted scales. All of these 
trees have a spicy, balsam-like smell that is very pleasant. 

The cedars are very different from the needle-leafed trees. The 
tiny, flattened, or spiny leaves overlap each other, making scaly or 
mossy stems. The flat-leafed arbor vitae trees and shrubs are cedars. 
So are the round-stemmed cypresses, the junipers with their purple 
berries instead of cones, the gnarly yew-trees with their red or violet 
seed berries, and the giant redwoods of California. Much like the 
cedars are the club-mossed larches or tamaracks, that grow in swampy 
places. Some of the larches and cypresses drop their leaves in the fall. 

The cone-bearers put out new leaves in the spring, after their 
blossoms, dropping the leaves from the older, inner parts of the 
tree, leaving them quite bare, and strewing the ground with brown 
needles. All the branches and twigs are tipped with tender green 
tassels of new leaves. Away up on the tip of the tallest pine is a 
long green feather. The Indians have a wonder story about that. 
When a young chief was turned into a pine tree by some bit of magic, 
he was allowed to keep his eagle feather. 

There the feathered tip of the pine waves proudly today, above 
all the trees of the forest. 




FLOWERS OF RED MAPLE. 


SILVER MAPLE FLOWER. 


SUGAR MAPLE. 


SILVER MAPLE. 






















RED BIRCH. 


CHERRY BIRCH 


YELLOW BIRCH. 


WHITE BIRCH. 


























PART III—INSECTS, ETC. 


I. MRS. MUSCA DOMESTICA CALLS 

“Were you speaking of me? Here I am.” 

A very dignified little visitor, about a quarter of an inch long, 
drops “out of the nowhere” in the most surprising way! But she 
is very polite about ringing a little buzzing door bell to let you know 
she is coming. “Buzz-z-zip! I’m Mrs. Musca Domestical” 

What a name for such a little creature! One of the capital 
letters of it would almost cover her, and the length of it would make 
a nice distance for an evening stroll. 

“It’s just Latin for House Fly,” she says. “Don’t you think 
I deserve it? I come into the house whenever you leave the screen 
door open. I’m neighborly and don’t wait to be invited. I’m very 
fond of human society. You have such nice things to eat. But 
you are not very friendly,” she added reproachfully. “Actually, 

I’ve had the door shut in my face, and 
been ‘shoo-ed’ out like a hen.” 

“Well, you’re not very clean, you 
know. You go to dirty places, and you 
don’t wipe your feet.” 

“ I would if I had a door-mat, I 
would, indeed. I wash my face and brush 
my clothes oftener than you do. Just 
watch me.” 

There she sits at a respectful distance, 
rubbing her little front hairy legs together 
A house fly magnified. vigorously. Then she balances herself on 

the other four, and rubs the hindlegs. 
When the middle pair are cleaned, she draws a leg across her mouth 
to wet it, and washes her face like a cat. Finally she flutters her 
silver gauze wings to shake the dust off. As a delicate hint she 
nibbles at a clean plate. 

“ Don’t human people ask their visitors if they care for refresh¬ 
ments? Thank you! A grain of sugar is my favorite lunch. You 
may watch me eat, if you won’t come too near.” 

201 



202 


MRS. MUSCA DOMESTICA CALLS 


She has no legs to spare for picking up food; but she has a little 
mouth that drops like an elephant’s trunk. Out of that mouth comes 
a dew-drop of liquid to make syrup of the grain of sugar. The knob 
on the end of the mouth parts, and the two lips spread out flat over 
that drop. She stands there licking with a little rasp of a tongue 
blissfully until she has sucked it all 
up. Then she wipes her mouth with 
her foot, and cleans herself all over 

■-U ' . 

again. 

“ I have another name. It’s Dip- 

tera. That means two-winged. My 

family is very important. It’s the 

biggest one on earth, with thousands 

of members. You can always know a 

Diptera by the two wings. Most insects 

have four. One of my cousins is very Tsetse Fly, found in Africa. Its 
, , T , . . bite kills cattle, horses and dogs, 

musical, but I am sorry to say, he is b ut is harmless to man. 

also a blood-sucker. If he shows any 

fondness for people, it’s because he likes to bite them. His name is 
mosquito. The horse-, or gad-fly, can make horses jump and even 
run away. The Hessian fly stings wheat. The saw fly lays her eggs 
on rose blossoms. The tsetse fly kills cattle sometimes; the gall fly 
stings plants and makes galls grow on them. And there are gnats 

and midges. They come in swarms. Did 
you ever hear of ‘a plague of flies?’ ” 

“Yes, indeed, and ‘the fly in the oint¬ 
ment.’ You spoil a good many things. 
Your whole family seems to be a nuisance.” 

“ Not all. The dragon-fly and ichneumon 
fly are useful. And I don’t see what you 
have against me! I can’t bite or sting, and 
I eat very little, compared with some 
people I could mention. To be sure, I 
have little tickly hairs on my feet and scrapers on my tongue, 
and that makes people nervous. And I like to wake lazy people 
up in the morning. No one can sleep after daylight when I’m 
around. If you had only one summer to live, you’d want to get 
up early and make the most of every day. 

“It’s pretty hard to catch me, too. I have several thousand 
little flat eyes in the two in my head. They’re like the facets on a 



Ichneumon Fly; is useful 
because it destroys insects 
which injure trees and shrubs. 






MRS. MUSCA DOMESTICA CALLS 


203 


diamond, only ever so many more of them. I can feel, and I 
can smell food with these two feather plumes on my head. 

“ No, indeed, I never fold my wings, when I sit down, as foolish 
moths do. I keep them ready for business. Aren’t they pretty? I 
make them of silver gauze, and paint them with bronze and purple. 
Do you notice cream-tinted scales behind them? Those are balancers. 
If I didn’t have them I’d tumble head over heels when I tried to 
fly. I can tilt my head, too. It is set right down on my shoulders, 
on a kind of pivot. 

‘ No, I never have dyspepsia, thank you! You see, I make 
syrup or broth out of everything I eat. The food goes into a little 
mill, with spiny teeth, to be chewed and mixed with something to 
digest it. Then it goes into a little bag of a stomach. I can-tell you 
how not to have lung troubles, too. Don’t have any lungs. I breathe 
through holes in my skin like the leaves on the trees. I fill little 
air bladders and pass the air back to blood vessels. 

“If you really want to know how wonderfully I am made you 
ought to have a glass that would magnify me a hundred times. I 

have three silver girdles across my chest, or 
thorax, a yellow band on my abdomen and 
some golden spots. All six of my legs are 
fastened to the thorax. But if there is one 
thing I am vain of it’s my feet. Just look at 
them. The legs are jointed, and on the last 
joint of each is a pair of claws like a lobster’s. 
But they close over a pad or cushion covered 
with knobby hairs. All those hairs are sticky, 
and cling to things. Really, the smoother 
you make your walls the better I like them. 
A gold picture frame, or a nice white gas globe 
just suits me for an evening stroll, or a bed to sleep on, upside 
down. But every thing sticks to those feet! I can’t keep them 
clean, although I wipe them on every bit of bread or food you leave 
out for door-mats.” 

“Ah, so that’s why you bring typhoid fever into the house, 
naughty fly!” 

“Well!” with a little bristle of wings. “No wonder! You 
ought to see where I have to bring up my babies. I can’t carry them 
around, all legs and no arms as I am, now can I? I have to lay my 
eggs in warm moist places around stables and in garbage cans, or 



A fly’s foot magnified. 



204 


MRS. MUSCA DOMESTICA CALLS 


they never would hatch or have anything to eat. You.never see 
those eggs. They are dull, chalky seed-looking, little things, buried 
in smelly places. They hatch out into little white squirmy larvae 
in twenty-four hours, and eat that decaying stuff. I wouldn’t touch 
it myself! I like the good things on human tables. In less than a 
week those babies grow as long as I, and shut themselves up in 
brown cradles. 

"Asleep? You wouldn’t think so, from all the things that 
happen in a week’s time. Why, they make themselves all over, 
from little white, crawly, unpleasant grubs into—” 

“Beautiful little winged creatures like their mother?” 

“Not just at once. When they push the front ends of their 
cradles off and crawl out, their wings are very small and soft and 
baggy, and cling close to their sides. Those infant flies are pale 
and sickly looking. You wouldn’t think them likely to live. And 
they breathe by puffing out their foreheads in the most comical 
way. I assure you I don’t always know my own children. 

“Do I have many children? Oh, quite a few. I never keep any 
account of them. I lay something near a hundred eggs at a time 
and four times in a season. In just fourteen days after an egg is laid 
it is hatched, eats, grows, makes a cradle, comes out and is a full- 
grown fly ready to lay eggs itself. I shouldn’t wonder if I would 
be several times a great grandmother before I die. I’m not saying 
it to brag. . It’s a trait of the whole Diptera family.” 

“Mercy, no wonder there are so many of you!” Mrs. Musca 
Domestica rubbed her clothes brush legs together, thoughtfully, and 
washed her face for the third time. 

“There are not as many house flies as there used to be. We 
really threaten to die out. People don’t leave as many piles of refuse 
about for us to lay eggs in. They scald their garbage cans, put lime 
in plumbing traps, and actually wash stable floors with hose. There 
are screen doors and windows everywhere. If we do get into a house, 
there are fly traps and sticky paper to catch us. In some houses 
there isn’t a crumb about. I really wonder such stingy people don’t 
starve themselves. We have other troubles, too. Most of us die 
of a kind of fungus that paralyzes us, in the fall. Haven’t you seen 
us sitting around, unable to move, with gray bands around our 
bodies? A few of us do manage to creep into cracks of warm houses, 
and go to sleep until spring. And there is— 

“Did you say spiders? ? ? “Good-by! ! !” 

See Fly, page 687. 





HOW A LITTLE 


STARTED A BIG 


FLY 


The great city of Cleveland, with the help of the newsboys and the school children and 
Dr. Hodge's fly traps, got rid of its flies in one season. The city paid ten cents a hundred 
for dead & flies and as’many as 25,000 were bought in an hour. 


This picture shows Professor C. F. Hodge, inventor 
of the fly trap, and a heap of dead flies, of which six¬ 
teen million were caught in the campaign he conducted 
in Worcester, Massachusetts. 


These fly 
traps were 
used on 
garbage 
cans and 
kitchen 
tables. 


Next to the “heap of the slain” before which Dr. Hodge is standing is a picture of a 
fly's foot and below it, in the circle, a fly’s tongue as they look under the microscope. It 
is with his unclean tongue and feet that the fly spreads disease. 











































oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 
O O 


WEBS FOR FLYING AND FISHING 


First, a flying spider spinning her web 
“wings”; second, getting ready 
to flv; third, in flight; 
fourth, with flying 

web folded— / 

down she M 

comes. /V 


TYPES OF FLYING SPIDERS 


o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 
o 

oooooooooocooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 


Strange little spinner under the water! This is the caddis worm—larva of the 
caddis fly. She spins a silk tube and across the entrance a web (here greatly magnified) 
with which she catches little water people, as spiders catch flies. When outside of her 
“suitcase” she drags it about with her. Small shells and gravel stick to her and her case. 


O 

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MRS. GARDEN SPIDER “ AT HOME” 


205 


* 


II. MRS. GARDEN SPIDER “AT HOME” 

Mrs. Garden Spider won’t come to see you and buzz by the hour. 
If you go to see her she’ll tell you plainly that she doesn’t care for 
society. It takes all her time to build her house, earn her living, 
and bring up her babies. She isn’t asking favors of anyone, and 
she’ll be obliged to you if you won’t stand around and scare flies away. 

But she makes such a pretty house that you feel like going 
anyhow. It’s a gossamer wheel of a curtain. You can find it in 
almost any garden, stretched across a fence corner, or between the 
low branches of stout shrubs. You won’t often see the little gray 
and brown mistress of it. That house is merely a sun-parlor of a 
net, spread in the open for the unwary fly. The lady of the house 
is of such a retiring nature that she prefers to live in a dark tunnel 
den behind the parlor. Stand out of sight—and remember Madame 
has from two to eight eyes in her head, and can see all around the 
compass—and fling a bit of dry leaf on the web. She darts out. 
She views that leaf with disgust, thinking the wind has played a 
trick on her. Very likely she will push it overboard, for she keeps 
her house clean and shining. 

Any time a hard rain or wind comes along the pretty house 
may be wrecked. Then you may watch Mrs Spider build it again. 
She has to do it before breakfast, too, or go hungry. Get an opera 
glass, if you can, and watch her at a distance. She sits out on a 
leaf or twig or fence post, looking over the building site. The color 
of dead wood, half an inch long, with eight thread-like legs, and 
darting movements, she isn’t easy to follow. 

She drops, or jumps, from one support to another, paying out 
a tiny, gray silk cable behind her, and fastening it wherever she 
can. Soon she has an irregular space inclosed. Do you know how 
fine those lines are? You would have to lay four or five thousand 
of them side by side, to make a ribbon an inch wide. You can see 
her run around those lines and pull them with her hind foot to test 
their strength If one breaks she spins another. 

She jumps, or drops, across the space, carrying a line, and 
fastens it to the farther side. She runs back to the middle, doubling 
the line as she goes, and jumps across at right angles. Soon, she 
has her space cut into four equal parts, as neatly as mama cuts an 


206 


MRS. GARDEN SPIDER “ AT HOME” 

apple pie. Then she cuts each piece in two, once and again, making 
eight, then sixteen pieces. Those are the spokes for the wheel web. 
The many crossings make a stout hub. She tests the spokes, pulling 
on each one and running over them. She has three claws, and fine¬ 
toothed bristle combs on her hind feet. May be she combs the snarls 
out and brushes away dust. 

Back she goes to the hub and weaves a spiral line, crossing the 
spokes and gluing the joints. She does it much as your mother 



SPIDER AND ITS WEB 


makes a spider wheel in lace work. After a few wide turns, she makes 
the crossing circles closer together, because the spokes flare farther 
apart. She doesn’t fill in all the space out to her foundation lines. 
Some building sites are larger than others. She takes the best one 
she can find, but her web is always about the same size. 

Finished? No, indeed. When men build houses they first put 
up the frame work, then cheap scaffolding to stand on. Mrs. Spider 
sets up scaffolding to walk on. She starts back from the outside 
edge of the wheel. This time she uses a much better silk. It is 
studded with little sticky beads. You heard Mrs. House Fly say 
she liked smooth things to walk on, didn’t you? Gummy spider 
webs tangle in the hairs on her feet, and hold her for an instant. 
Mrs. Spider knows that very well. Her web is a very good sticky 
fly paper. As she travels back to the hub,- she cuts the scaffolding 
away. Then she makes a silk den behind the web, and connects the 
web and the den with a telephone, or door bell wire, that she keeps 
her foot on That web is stretched like a drum-head. When a fly 
drops on it, it vibrates, 











MRS. GARDEN SPIDER ‘‘AT HOME” 


207 


Wonderful, isn’t it? And it didn’t take Mrs. Spider more than 
an hour to make it. If it is destroyed she seems to have plenty of 
material to build another. It really is Mrs. Spider who does all 
this work. You will nearly always find her living alone. Mr. Spider 
is very much smaller than she is, and he is not a worker. As the 
female bees do all the work, and drive the drones or males out of 
the hives, or even kill them, so Mrs. Spider barely tolerates her mate 
and even eats him if other food is scarce. She builds her own house, 
catches her own food, looks after her babies, and lives all alone in 
a busy solitude. 

A long, long time ago the work of this clever spinner and weaver 
was looked upon as pure magic. The Greeks made a wonder story 
about her. The spider was a maiden named Arachne (A-rak'ne). 
In a contest of spinning and weaving she proved herself better than 
the wise goddess Athe'na. To punish her for daring to be more 
clever than a goddess, Arachne was turned into a spider, and told 
to spend the rest of her days making her wonderful web. Unable 
to talk, Arachne kept the secret of her spinning until men made 
microscopes. Now, it seems as if this little creature could always 
have told men how to make spinning frames to turn cotton, silk, 
wool and flax fibres into yarn. 

At the rear end of her abdomen are from two to eight little pin¬ 
head knobs, in pairs. These are spinnerets. Each one is covered 
with hollow bristles. Altogether there may be a thousand of them. 
From each one comes a hair of liquid silk. They all flow, or are 
twisted together into one thread. The spider seems able to expel, 
or shoot out, the silk and fasten it to any support, and to use the 
lengthening cable to propel herself. Haven’t you seen house-spiders 
let themselves down from ceilings by these silk cords? Once started 
a web thread seems to be pulled from the spinner as fast as she travels 

The spidei is not an insect, as are the fly, the ant, the bee and 
butterfly. She has eight legs, while insects have but six. Her body 
is m two parts instead of three. Her legs are jointed like a lobster’s, 
and like the lobster and crab she is a fierce fighter, and hunter. If 
a leg is torn off in a fight she is usually able to grow another one. 
She has no wings to flv, but is a regular acrobat, doing high jumps, 
and long leaps, and tight-rope walking and cliff-climbing up smooth 
walls. You see, she has eight legs, each one with seven joints. Seven 
times eight are fifty-six joints, and all of them are as limber as a 
trapeze performer’s. The spider’s jaws are steel traps with biting 


208 


MRS. GARDEN SPIDER “AT HOME” 

teeth, and behind them are little poison sacs. Few spiders could hurt 
you seriously, but their bites paralyze flies and other small insects. 

From the two to eight little eyes in her head, to the same number 
of spinnerets in her tail, from the deadly jaws to the sensitive, clawed 
and bristled and padded foot, the spider is a wonderful little creature. 
She is as clean as Mrs. Fly, washing her face and brushing her hairy 
body and legs vigorously. She keeps her web clean and every thread 
mended. And she cares for her babies as tenderly as a mother bird. 

Did you ever see a garden spider moving along slowly, dragging 
a little gray silk ball with her last pair of legs? That is the cradle 
she makes of silk for her eggs. It isn’t fastened to her. When at 
home she keeps it in the den, or hangs it on a nearby twig. But 

/ 

when she travels she takes it with her, although it hampers her, and 
makes it much easier for a toad or frog or bird to snap her up. If 
she drops that ball she hunts for it frantically. Her babies are not 
hatched out as greedy little grubs, but as little specks of spiders. 
That is quite unlike any insect. And Mrs. Spider carries her babies 
on her back. They just swarm all around her like chickens around 
a hen. She must have to feed them at first, much as a robin feeds 
its nestlings. 

Don’t kill spiders in gardens. They eat insects, oh, a great 
number of them, for they are big eaters. Nearly all insects are harmful, 
or their grub babies are, living, as they do, on plants. The spiders’ 
wheel and sheet webs, and tunnel dens, are very wonderful. The 
little creatures are patient, skillful and industrious as bees and ants. 
They neither use nor destroy anything useful, and they help us grow 
flowers and vegetables, by eating the flies and moths that lay their 
eggs on plants. See Spider, page 1798. 


GULLIVER MAN AND HIS LILLIPUTIAN ENEMIES 


209 


III. GULLIVER MAN AND HIS LILLIPUTIAN ENEMIES 

Once upon a time a baby was born. It was a very, very small 
baby, and almost too feeble to move. Yet, the very first day of 
its life, it ate two hundred times its own weight. As long as it lived 
it ate as greedily as that. It was nearly all mouth and stomach. 
Every day or two it outgrew its own skin. The skin split down the 
back, the baby crawled out in a new and larger skin, and went right 
on eating. It seemed never to sleep. In a few weeks it changed its 
skin five times. When it was grown up it was ten thousand times 
as big as when it was born. 

What a monster! If this were a human baby, it would have 
eaten a pile of food as big as a ton of coal the first day. And, when 
fully grown, it would have weighed one hundred thousand pounds. 
Is this a giant story, like that of the Brob'ding-nag'ians in Gulliver’s 
Travels? No, it’s a really, truly story, but the monster babies are 
more like the Lilliputians. They were the tiny people, who swarmed 
all over Gulliver when he was asleep, and tied him up tight with 
cobwebs or something. Our Lilliputian enemies are caterpillars and 
grubs. They are hatched, many of them, from pinhead eggs, and 
they grow to hundreds and even thousands of times as big as when 
they come out of the eggs. 

“Once upon a time” is right now, and all the time. You can 
find these monster babies on every lawn, in every garden and park 
and farm, on the grass, on small plants and big trees; buried in soft 
fruits and hard grains, and in tunnels they have bored in roots and 
stems and tree trunks. You can see their fathers and mothers flying 
in the air, too. They are beautiful butterflies and moths, shiny 
beetles and gauzy-winged flies. How pretty they are, and they 
don’t seem to be doing any harm at all. 

So long as they have wings few insects eat much, and most of them 
live only a short time. But the females are busy laying eggs. That 
little gray moth, half an inch across the wings, that you see hovering 
over the pink apple blossoms, lays an egg that hatches into the apple 
worm. The fat white grub eats its way through, spoils the apple and 
crawls out. It spins a rough cocoon, just the color of the tree, and 
under a scale of bark. There it lies all winter, coming out as a moth, 
in the spring, to lay more eggs in the blossoms, to spoil more apples. 


210 


GULLIVER MAN AND HIS LILLIPUTIAN ENEMIES 


All insects go through this larva stage. Then they do nothing 
but eat. Bees feed their babies with honey, so they do no harm at 
all, and are very useful to us. But most insects die when they have 
laid their eggs, and they leave their greedy babies to eat plants that 
men work so hard to grow. They always lay the eggs where the 
larva can find their favorite food, and they lay hundreds and even 
thousands of eggs, most of them too small for you to see. 

When the eggs of butterflies, moths and flies hatch, they come 
out as caterpillars with six legs, hairy or smooth worm-like bodies 
and chewing mouths. The larva of beetles are usually footless grubs. 
Some of them look much like the parent insects, but are less active. 
They all begin to eat ravenously. Inside there is little but stomach 
and material for making cocoons. Leaf-eaters grow to full size in 
a few weeks. Orchard fruit and nut eaters stay in the fruits until 
they fall. The larva of some boring beetles live in the wood of trees 
for two or three years. They honey-comb solid trees with little 
tunnels. 

When grown to full size the larva of all insects spin cocoons 
or make horny or papery cases Some roll up in leaves, using a very 
little silk to close the openings. They use the hairs from their own 
bodies, sometimes, to mix with silk, or with plant fibres. These 
cocoons nestle in the ridges of bark, hang from stems or leaves, or 
lie'in the ground. Cocoons are often so near the color and texture 
of the thing they are fastened to, that you may look at hundreds of 
them and never see them at all. 

There is no living plant or animal that these little creatures do 
not prey upon. As insects they sting, suck blood and sometimes 
kill the higher animals. But it is as grubs 
and caterpillars that they eat and injure 
millions of dollars worth of grains and fruits 
and garden crops every year. 

Wheat has three insect enemies—the 
chinch bug, the Hessian fly and the wheat 
midge. When ground into flour the meal 
worm often hatches out and makes it unfit 
for use. On the potato plant is the Colo¬ 
rado beetle that eats the leaves, so they Hessian Fly which causes 

J great damage to wheat. 

cannot make plant food. The cabbage head 

is burrowed into by the larva of the cabbage moth. Big green 
caterpillars feed on the tomato, and grape vines. A moth makes 








OUR WAR WITH THE MOSQUITO 




First picture shows head, feelers and lance of female mosquito; on the right, 
“whiskers” of male mosquito, supposed to be an organ of hearing; in the center, a 
doctor’s outfit for catching swamp mosquitoes for study. 


Mosquito larva wriggler. (Greatly enlarged.) 



Mrs. Mosquito’s surgical instruments—a lance and four little saws. 



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GULLIVER MAN AND HIS LILLIPUTIAN ENEMIES 


211 


wormy apples and pears, but the curculio, a weevil beetle, punctures 
the skins of plums, cherries and peaches, and pushes an egg down 
to the stone. The currant worm strips the bush fruits of leaves. The 
slug of the saw fly destroys roses, and little, green, plant-lice, or 
aphides, suck the juices of rose bushes, fruit trees and hop vines. 

Cotton plants have three enemies—the cotton-boll weevil, the 
cotton worm, hatched from a moth egg, and the cotton stainer, a 
little red beetle. The chief enemy of corn is the cut worm. The 
army worm marches from field to field, millions strong, destroying 


Cotton-boll weevil; first figure showing insect at rest and second showing wing-covers 

lifted and wings extended for flight. 

grasslands. Grasshoppers come in clouds and leave bare fields behind 
them. On the bark of fruit trees a leech of an insect sucks unseen, 
under the black speck disc of the San Jose scale. The tree dies 
and the pest spreads through an orchard. The tent caterpillars often 
take entire limbs of fruit and shade trees. They weave a cob-web 
tent over a big colony of squirming leaf-eaters. 

The number of species, or kinds of insects is far, far beyond 
all other living creatures put together. Some scientists say there 
may be a million species. They all lay countless eggs. One scientist 
says that a young cherry tree may have ten million plant-lice on it. 
In one year the codling moth has put worms into ten million dollars 
worth of apples, and the Hessian fly has destroyed one hundred 
million dollars worth of wheat in our country. All the insect pests 
put together cause a loss on our farm crops, orchard fruits and garden 
products of five hundred million dollars in some years. 

Isn’t it a wonder they leave anything at all for human beings 
and the higher animals to eat? Farmers and gardeners fight these 
enemies all the time. They spray plants and trees with poisons. 
They plow land in the fall, to turn up buried cocoons to the frost. 
They plant trap strips to catch the larva, and burn the strips. In 
gardens they pick off grubs and caterpillars by hand. They cut 
















212 


GULLIVER MAN AND HIS LILLIPUTIAN ENEMIES 


down trees and limbs and burn them. All the year around these 
enemies, too small, often, to be seen, too high to be reached, too 
hidden in the earth, in the fruits, the bark, the hearts and roots of 
plants, to be found, are fought. But all that human beings can do, 
is to keep them in check—sometimes. And sometimes men can 
only look on, quite helpless, and see fields laid waste. Don’t you 
think farmers must often feel as Gulliver did, when he was bound 
by those swarms of five or six inch high Lilliputians? 

If men had no help in fighting these billions of enemies they 
would lose the battle. But these greedy little creatures have enemies 
of their own, that live among them and prey upon them. These 
enemies of the insects are our friends. Do you know any of them? 

Birds? Oh, yes, of course, all the song birds. We will tell you 
about our bird friends in another story. But there are some useful 
insects, too, that live on their kind, and a few other humble creatures 
that you may think of as pests. Perhaps, not knowing, you may 
have killed some of them. You ought to know all these friends so 
you can protect them, for we need all the help we can get in growing 
useful plants and animals. To help you understand just how powerful 
and destructive these insect enemies of ours are, turn back in this 
book to the names of some of them. See Insects, Caterpillars, 
Butterfly, Beetle, Fly, Weevil, Nature Study, Aphides, Army- 
Worm, Codlin Moth, Cotton-boll Weevil, Canker Worm, Chinch 
Bug, Hessian Fly, Grasshopper, Locust, Slug, Potato Bug, 
“Friends in Feathers.” 


PYGMY FRIENDS THAT FLY AND HOP AND CREEP 


218 


IV. PYGMY FRIENDS THAT FLY AND HOP AND CREEP 

Lions and tigers are such terrible beasts that you are very glad 
they live in circus menageries, park zoos and far-away jungles. As 
for dragons, very likely they never lived at all, except in story books, 
along with mermaids and jobberwocks. But insects could tell you 
quite a different story. In their world, up in the air, down on the 
ground, in earth dens and even in the water, are beasts of prey that 
devour them. The very names of some of them are enough to frighten 
their victims into spasms. There are dragon-flies, ant-lions, tiger- 
beetles and spiders. But some of them have quite innocent names, 
such as frog, toad and lady-bird. 

Wouldn’t mosquitoes and flies and gnats be indignant, if they 
knew that we think the dragon fly beautiful? But it is as beautiful 
as any butterfly, and in its darting, skimming flight it is as swift and 
graceful as a swallow. It really is the swallow of the insect world. 

It catches and eats its food on the wing, and it eats nothing but flying 
creatures smaller than itself. It hunts its small game over ponds 
and ditches, sw r amps and marshy shores, just where insects breed 
by millions. Very likely you call these pretty friends of ours snake 
feeders and devil’s darning needles, but they are too busy feeding 
themselves to feed snakes, and they can’t sting or bite you or sew 
up your ears, at all. They are as harmless as humming birds. 

There are several varieties of dragon flies, darners and damsel 
flies, but they are all insect feeders. They have very long, slender, 
stiff bodies of dazzling metal colors, in steel blue, purple, green 
bronze, copper and silver white. Their four long, narrow, silver- 
gauze usings are beautifully veined, and are often spotted with white 
or browm or amber. Their big, jewel eyes stand out from their heads 
and glitter like automobile lamps. And they have regular snapping- 
turtle mouths. 

On very hot midsummer days there often seems to be nothing 
on the wing but these glitter-winged dragons of the air, and their 
sw'arms of little victims. Some of them skurry to shelter in the 
water weeds if a cloud blows up, but others love to frolic with the 
wind, and will even go out over w r hite-capped waves on the sea 
shore. If food is scarce on the water, some of them w-ill go up into 
meadows and orchards and get a lunch of codlin moths and weevils. • 


214 


PYGMY FRIENDS THAT FLY AND HOP AND CREEP 


The green-bodied darner even ventures onto lawns, and eats house 
flies and mosquitoes there. 

When dragon flies alight, which isn’t often, for they seem tire¬ 
less, they keep their wings outspread. The damsel flies fold their 
slender wings down their darning- 
needle backs, in the shyest way, as 
if they didn’t want to be noticed. 

Their name comes from the French 
—demoiselle—which means young 
lady. One of. the damselflies is so 
gray and modest that it is called 
marsh nun. 

All these ar6 insect feeders, both 
in the winged and in the larva stage. 

They lay their eggs on the water, or 
on the stems of water plants. The 
larva are not worms or grubs, but 
imperfect insects something like grasshoppers. They are 1 called 
nymphs. But you will never see them. They live in the mud 
and on stems in the water, and they eat tadpole mosquitoes, and 
other water larva. 

There is another insect something like the dragon fly that looks 
as if it might sting. It has a long, wire-like tail that it can curl over 
its back and poke into a hole in a tree. This is the ichneumon fly 
(ik-noo'mon). It often stands on the bark of a tree exactly like 
a woodpecker, so motionless that you can snapshot it with a kodak. 
It has very long, jointed legs and feelers, and one kind has a body 
that flares out behind like a brass horn. Some people think the 
ichneumon fly bores those holes in trees. But the hole is made by 
some boring beetle. At the bottom of each hole is a grub that feeds 
on the wood. The body of that soft, fat grub is just the place the 
ichneumon fly likes to lay an egg in. Then, when the baby hatches, 
it eats the grub. The fly will go all over a tree and poke its flexible 
wire egg-layer into countless holes. This clever creature eats very 
little, but spends most of its time laying eggs in the larva of moths, 
butterflies and beetles. 

Sometimes you may see an insect that looks like a small dragon 
fly, but that flaps its four gauze wings, in flying. It lays eggs in tiny 
sand deserts in the woods, on river banks and sea shores. An innocent 
looking flier it is, but its larva is a tiue beast of prey—the cunning, 



Dragon Fly. It has no sting and 
is harmless to man. It feeds on 
insects which it catches while on the 
wing. 










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A PIGMY FRIEND “WROTE” THIS 


A beetle grub traveled \Y\ miles on these paper rolls. He was kept “inked” like a 
pen and so wrote his own record. 


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The picture on the left shows glass jars of earth containing eggs of these beetles 
hatching in the sun; on the right ; how beetles are carried into the field for planting 
colonies. Every hole is the house of a beetle. 

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Such beetles are imported by our government because they live on destructive cater¬ 
pillars, and the above record was made to learn how far they could travel in search 
of food. They were brought from Europe in these match boxes. On the right is a 
beetle breeding house. 



































NEST OF GRASSHOPPERS UNDERGROUND. NEST OF BEETLES UNDERGROUND. 

The eggs of these insects laid on the ground, hatch out into larvae or grubs which burrow in the ground, and when developed the insects crawl to the surface. 








PYGMY FRIENDS THAT FLY AND HOP AND CREEP 


215 


flesh-eating ant-lion. The egg hatches into a clumsy, humped, bug¬ 
like creature, with spiny hairs to which wet sand sticks. It has six 
digging legs, and jaws like a mouse trap. It makes a round pit about 
as big as would be made by pressing the bottom of a small teacup 
into the sand. When an ant or other little creeper runs over the 
edge of the pit, it just naturally slides down hill. Before it can climb 
out again it is snapped up by the half buried ant-lion. 

Another sand-dweller with a lair is the tiger beetle. It is brave 
in a shiny armor of copper, golden green, sand color or pea green 
with white spots, and is striped and spotted like a tiger or leopard. 
Its jaws are long, horny, hooked and toothed, and they shut together 
like the blades of scissors. The larva of the tiger beetles dig pits 
in which they lie, mouth and eyes out, snapping up all small insects 
that come their way. 

Did you ever catch a pretty red, black-spotted lady-bird beetle 
on a rose bush, and say: 

Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home. 

Your house is on fire, your children will burn! 

It fairly leaped in wild alarm, when you let it go. Lady-birds 
cannot walk well, so they are easily captured, but they can fly. There 

are black lady-birds with red or yellow spots, too. 
Do you know why you can find them on rose 
bushes and fruit trees? They eat those little soft 
green plant lice, or aphides, that swarm on certain 
plants. In England gardeners hunt for these neat 
insects to put into flower gardens, orchards and 
hop fields. If they couldn’t get these little friends 
in any other way, very likely they’d be willing to 
pay for them. 

French gardeners really do pay four and five cents a piece 
for ugly, warty little hop toads. Toads eat almost anything—red 
spiders, flies, wasps, caterpillars and moths. And they just dote 
on cabbage and green salad worms. Nothing touches the toad. He 
has no teeth to bite, or claws on his webby feet to fight with, nor a 
stinger. But he has glands behind his jewel-like eyes with which 
he can make a dreadful smell. This liquid doesn’t cause warts as 
some people think, but it gives the toad a nice wide field of lonesome¬ 
ness. He is a night prowler, coming out at dusk. In the daytime 
he sits in a shady place taking a mouthful of air at a gulp, now 
and then. 




PYGMY FRIENDS THAT FLY AND HOP AND CREEP 


210 


The toad, like his water cousin, the frog, has a long tongue, 
fastened to the front of his jaw. It unrolls, darts out like lightning, 
catches an insect on a gummy tip, and snaps back quicker than a 
wink. A toad can clear a house of cockroaches, and a few in a garden 
will give you more sound vegetables and fewer worms. Tree toads 
are useful in forests and orchards, and frogs in ponds and swamps. 
The garden spider is useful, too. (See Mrs. Garden Spider “At 
Home.”) 

There is another very humble, helpless little friend that you 
should not harm. This is the smooth, pinkish-brown worm that you 
dig for fish bait. It is a true worm, and not a caterpillar or larva 
of an insect. Its real name is earth-worm. It eats earth for the 
water and decaying vegetables, but every bit that it eats passes 
through its soft body, and is powdered and enriched so it will grow 
plants better. 

After a hard rain you may see sidewalks strewn with their dead 
bodies. They cannot live without moisture, but too much rain often 
drowns them out of their burrows. If a living worm is touched it 
shrinks to half its six or eight inches of length, which shows that 
the little blind creature can feel, and be afraid. Then you can see 
that its body is made up of ring muscles. And under a magnifying 
glass you can find tiny hook-like feet, and a sharp gimlet of a boring 
nose. That nose bores through and through the soil. One worm, 
it is said, can turn up a quart of finely powdered earth in a summer. 
And it must turn up many insect eggs and cocoons, to be eaten or 
to die. Earth worms is one sign of good soil. When the soil is 
naturally poor, or is worn out by bad farming, there will be few 
earthworms in it or none at all. (See Dragon-fly, Ichneumon Fly, 
Frog, Toad, Lady-bird, Earthworm.) 






. 















© F. E. COMPTON & CO. 

COMMON BIRDS IN THEIR 

Song Sparrow Rose-breasted Grosbeak 

Wood Pewee Phoebe 

Kingbird Cowbird 

Scarlet Tanager Bobolink 


FROM BIRO GUIDE © CHARLES K. REED, WORCESTER, MASS. 

NATURAL COLORS 

Wilson Thrush Blue Jay 

American Redstart Catbird 

Purple Marten Indigo Bunting 

Orchard Oriole 






© F. E. COMPTON A CO. 

COMMON 

Flicker 

Bluebird 

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 
Chipping Sparrow 


r MUM BIRD GUIDE 


BIRDS IN THEIR NATURAL 

Cardinal American Goldfinch 

Belted Kingfisher House Wren 

Cedar Waxwing Wood Thrush 

Red-eyed Vireo 


' vnAKLEo 


’ "ttu, WORCESTER, MASS. 


COLORS 

Red-breasted Woodpecker 
Oven-bird 

Red-winged Blackbird 
Humming Bird 
Meadow Lark 





FART IV—BIRDS 

A BIRD-LOVER’S OUTDOOR AVIARY 

Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher. —Your mother and grand¬ 
mother can remember the time when it wasn’t thought to be so very 
wicked to rob birds’ nests, or even to kill song birds for their pretty wings. 
Isn’t that strange? But, in nearly every village in the land there was 
some wise, kind man or woman who knew these things to be not only 
very wicked but very foolish. If it had not been for these few. scattered 
bird-lovers, who protected the little feathered friends that sing to us so 
sweetly, and work for us so willingly, we would not have as many wild 
birds as we have today. 

This is the story of one of these old-time bird-lovers and his bird- 
haunted garden. He was a country doctor. He lived in a village in the 
middle West, in a small white house with green shutters. In his large 
garden he had many beautiful trees, and the finest flowers and fruits and 
vegetables in the town, although he never seemed to take any more pains 
with them than his neighbors. People said he was lucky, or had the 
“knack” of growing things. But the wise doctor only smiled and said: 

“I have all my little feathered friends to help me.” Few people 
understood just what he meant by that. 

As the years went by, and wild birds became fewer, the doctor’s 
garden was almost the only place in the town where many of them nested. 
Then people went to the doctor’s house, to see and to hear the birds they 
had driven from their own door yards. The dearest treat the doctor kept 
for his little human friends, was to invite a few of them at a time to a 
sunrise concert on his vine-covered side porch. There, as still as little 
mice, they could listen to the bird songs, look through the doctor’s big 
field-glass, and watch the happy singers at work or play. Now and then, 
the quietest child of all was allowed to peep into a big knot-hole in a fence 
post, and look at Mama Bluebird sitting on her eggs. 

That is the way in which one little girl learned to know and to love 
our wild song birds. Don’t you want to go into the doctor’s garden, and 
watch the birds as they come north in the spring? You can learn to know 
them by their songs and colors, their nests and babies. You can learn 
how they helped their good friend grow flowers and fruits and vegetables. 
And you can learn how he made them understand that they were wanted, 
and would be protected. If you know all these things you, too, can have 
the wild song birds for summer visitors wherever you live. They will 
come to farms and into sheltered gardens of houses in large towns, and 
into the parks of the very largest cities. 


217 


PART IV-BIRDS 


I. BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 

The doctor was never quite sure which of his little friends in 
feathers arrived first in the spring—the bluebird, the song sparrow 
or the phoebe. Some morning in March, often before the snow was 
off the ground, he was awakened by a “pewit-pewee!” below his 
dormer window. There was seven-inch-long, cream-breasted, black¬ 
billed phoebe, fluttering about the leafless vines of the porch, singing 
her friendly greeting of just four notes. But from under the lilac 
and syringa shrubs he was sure to hear, about the same time, a 
“tweet, tweet, twittering,” for all the world as if some one’s pet 
canary had escaped from its cage. That was Mr. Song Sparrow, 
gray-brown of back and wings, speckle-breasted, busy and cheerful, 
stopping every now and then to twitter and trill from some low 
perch. But the doctor was apt to see the bluebird first, because of 
its bright color. 

Did you ever see a sapphire (saf-fire) in a ring? It is a lovely, 
deep, sparkling blue stone, like a blue diamond. The blue bird is 
the sapphire of the air. His wings and tail are tipped with black. 
His breast is as red as the robin’s. He really is a cousin of the robin’s. 
Both belong to the big, musical family of thrushes. 

Pretty Mr. Bluebird comes all alone. His sweet solo is some¬ 
thing like this: “ Here I am; all alone". Oh-oh-I-oh, pur-i-ty, cher-ish 
me!” It is the loveliest melody, a little bit sad, until his mate joins 
him a week or so later. Mrs. Bluebird has the same colors, but they 
are not so bright. That is the rule in the bird world. Papa wears 
the gayest coat and sings the finest song. But every bird' thinks 
he has the dearest, prettiest little mate in the world. He greets 
her with a song of joy. In the doctor’s garden, Mr. and Mrs. Blue¬ 
bird always sat close together on a low limb of an apple tree, when 
they arrived in the spring, and talked things over, oh so tenderly! 
Then they flitted about the place looking at housekeeping rooms. 
By and by you must see their little house and babies. They never 
thought of being afraid, lor the doctor’s plumy-tailed collie dog— 

218 


BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 


219 


Rob Roy—always lay on the porch to keep an eye out for stray 
cats, hawks and squirrels. 

When Mr. Robin comes, a little later than the bluebirds, he 
wears a smart new spring suit of brown, with a gay red vest. He 
welcomes his little mate with a happy, mellow song. “Chirp, chirp,” 
she answers faintly from the grass. “I’m 
rather tired from the journey, dear.” “Oh, 
cheer-up, cheer-up!” he answers. Down he 
drops to her side, and perks his knowing 
little head to this side and that, as if to 
say: “I think I hear a worm!” Suddenly 
he stabs the ground with his bill, braces his 
stout legs, gives a jerk and up comes a fat 
grub for Mrs. Robin’s wedding breakfast 
Up to a low branch he flies and sings her 
another song o pride and joy. 

All the male birds have a love song for 
their mates. Both birds have call notes, and harsh alarm notes to 
warn of danger, and to frighten away enemies. And they have 
talking tones. Mates will often flit about near each other, and 
exchange remarks. Very likely they are just talking about the 
weather, or the food supply, or their neighbors. You can spend a 
whole summe watching and listening to one family of birds, and 
learn something new and interesting every day. 

If ever you do that take a thrush for first choice. The 
robin, the bluebird, the brown thrasher and the mocking bird 
are thrushes. Nearly all the thrushes have beautiful manners 
and sweet singing voices. The mocking bird is one of the 
greatest singers of the feathered world. He is all our own, too, 
for he is not found in any country of the old world. He nests 
in our warm southern states. But once in a great while he comes 
north. So, it was the pride of the doctor’s heart to have a pair 
of mockers nesting in a spruce tree in his garden, for two or three 
summers. 

When the mocking bird begins to sing he springs or bounds 
upward, as if too happy to stay on the earth. The mocking bird 
is as long as the robin, but more slender. In color he is rather sober— 
gray above, with dark brown wings and tail that are tipped and 
lined with white. When the moon is full he often sings all night long. 
The only other bird that does this is the old-world nightingale. Our 



220 


BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 


great poet, Longfellow, describes the mocking bird’s song in 
Evangeline: 

“Then, from a neighboring thicket, the mocking bird, wildest of singers, 
Shook from his little throat such a flood of delirious music, 

That the whole air, and the woods, and the waters, seemed silent to listen.’’ 


Beside his own song he mocks all the 
other birds. He warbles and chirps and 
whistles; he twitters and trills, so you 
might think all the birds were holding 
concert when he sings. 

The mocker’s nearest rival in the 
garden was a red-brown-backed cousin, 
with a brown-spotted vest of cream color. 
Sometimes he is called the brown thrasher, 
from the way he thrashes his tail about. 
And he is called the brown mocker, too. 
One thing he does is to mock himself. He 
perches on a lofty branch of a tree to 
sing. Long black bill open and pointing 
skyward, he sings a song “like a babble 
of water in a brook.” 

When the song is finished he seems to say: “ I wonder if I could 
do that again.” And he does it, exactly as he did it before. The 
English poet Browning has noticed it: 



MOCKINGBIRD 


“That’s the wise thrush, who sings each song twice over, 
As if you might think he never could re-capture 
The first, wild, careless rapture.” 


Besides his own song, “twice over,” the brown thrush sings 
choice bits from a dozen other bird songs, one after the other. “ Hear 
me! Hear me!” he trills: “I can sing this, and this and this. Oh, 
the joy of it,—under the blue—in the sweet wind—swinging. Don’t 
you wish—you could do it? Try, try, try, yes you can, truly, truly!” 
Such a little cataract of melody, to fall from the high branch of an elm. 

The cat bird is a mocker, too. He is a thrush who can sing a 
pretty song when he wants to. But he is a saucy fellow. He caws 
like a crow and meows like a cat, to scare his timid neighbors into 
spasms, and to waken Rob Roy from his nap. Then he laughs at 
the joke. Do you know Mr. Cat Bird? He is quite a dandy, in a 
coat of London smoke and a pearl vest. He has a rusty red tail 


BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 


221 


that he jerks about when he sings. He skulks under bushes, and 
pounces on his creeping prey like a little feathered wild-cat. 

If the bluebird is the sapphire of the air, there is no jewel at 
all to compare with the glowing orange of the Baltimore oriole. He 
is a cousin of the blackbirds, as you might know from his velvet 
black wings and tail, and his flute-like whistle. His olive-backed, 
lemon-breasted mate sings, too, a lovely alto to his clear soprano. 
They sing the dearest duet you ever could hear. The orchard oriole 
has a black coat and hat, too, but his vest is a reddish brown, and 
his wings and tail are barred with white. He and his dull, olive 
and yellow mate sing duets, too, in richer, less whistling voices than 
the Baltimore. If you are not sure of the orchard orioles look for 
their pretty, sky-blue shoes and stockings. 

No blackbird is shy, you may be sure. The orioles always fly 
about in plain sight, and talk freely of themselves and their affairs. 
A hot-headed, blustering little fellow is the oriole, noisy, restless, 
talkative; always whistling gaily like a happy school boy, in sun, 
wind and rain. He has scolding notes for meddlesome neighbors, 
too. The orchard oriole is a good policeman. When he sounds his 
harsh, alarm note: “Chack!” every bird in the neighborhood knows 
it is time to skurry to cover. 

If the doctor hadn’t had a cow, and a pasture lot for her with 
a pond in it, and low elder and hazel and briar bushes around it, 
he wouldn’t have had some of the blackbirds nesting near him. A 
hedge of thorny, ruddy-flowered japonica was between the garden 
and the pasture. Often a gay flash of black and white, with a yellow 
patch on the back of the neck, tumbled up out of the meadow onto 
that hedge. It was the bobolink. He sang and swung and flirted 
his wings and tail. He chattered and gossiped and whistled. He 
just bubbled over with high spirits and innocent fun. Up and down 
the scale he sang, like a musical acrobat on a trapeze. But most of 
the time he just bubbled out his own saucy name. 

“Bob-o-link! Bob-o-link' Spink, spank, spink!” Dear little 
rascal. He had no trouble at all in winning a wife! 

In the cat-tails and rushes about the pond was always a colony 
of red-winged blackbirds. Glossy fellows the males were, in jetty 
coats with red, gold-bordered shoulder knots. They strutted and 
danced and jumped and whistled “Bob-o-lee!” or, as some bird 
lovers understand: “Con-quer-ee!” It can hardly be called singing, 
this explosive gurgle. 


222 


BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 


But oh, the meadow larks that nested in that pasture! This 
little brown-backed, and spotted-yellow-breasted singer, with the 
necklace of jet and white-tipped tail, is the Jenny Lind of our grass¬ 
lands. You cannot walk along the edge 
of a clover field but he may spring up at 
your feet, perch on a fence or bush, and 
pour out a melody like flutes and violins, 
and human voices in vesper hymns. Yet, 
so few notice the meadow lark that 
Audubon, our greatest bird student, called 
him neglecta. 

He is not a lark at all, as is the English 
sky-lark. He is a cousin of the blackbirds, 
the orioles and bobolinks. He walks like 
the blackbirds. He comes to us in April 
and sings all summer long, on the ground, on perches and on the 
wing. He is one of the very greatest of bird singers, rivalled only 
by the nightingale, the mocking bird, and the brown and hermit 
thrushes. 

There was rivalry among the children as to who should first 
spy the tanager in the doctor’s garden. A flash of scarlet flame 
across an open space, and the tanager is 
gone! This glowing coal of a bird with 
black velvet wings and tail, really belongs to 
a tropical family. He seems as strange 
among our wild birds as an orchid in a 
meadow. He flits about in silent places, 
singing a lovely little chant, as sad as the 
dove’s but of varied melody. To his mate 
he sings a low sweet warble. He calls like 
a robin, and he “throws” his voice like a 
ven-tril-o-quist, so you will often think him 
somewhere else. 

The cinnamon-brown, spotted-breasted 
hermit-thrush of our northern pine woods 
can “throw” his voice, too. He is as shy 
as the tanager. Perhaps both of them do 
that to deceive hawks and squirrels and 
other enemies as to their whereabouts. The tanager’s mate is a dull 
olive and yellow. Very soon he, too, takes off his scarlet and black 



WOOD-THRUSH 



MEADOWLARK 










BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 


223 


cloak, that attract far too much attention, and wears her shabby 
working dress. So, if you see the tanager in his dress of flame 
and soot at all, it must be in the spring or early summer. 

“Tweet, tweet, twitter, twitter, tweet!” Haven’t you heard 
that often from roadside weeds, where dandelions and thistles have 
gone to seed? No, it isn’t 
the speckled song-sparrow of 
the low bushes. It is a little 
black and yellow cousin of 
his—the gold-finch, or wild 
canary. Canary yellow with 
black wings and tail, he flies 
as a little canoe rides the 
water. Such a playful, sweet- 
tempered, “tweet, twittering” 
little fellow he is. He seems 
to waste half the summer 
idling, but he is really waiting 
for those downy weed seeds 
to line his pretty nest and to 
feed his babies. 

The finest singers of 
America are thrushes, black¬ 
birds and finches. The finches all have the canary twittering songs; 
the blackbirds the whistling, bubbling notes. The songs of the 
thrushes are pure rich melody, and many of them mock the songs of 
the warblers, the finches and the blackbirds. Another twittering finch 
is the snow-white and dead-black, short-billed grosbeak, with the 
patches of lovely rose color on the breast and under the wings. 
The cardinal grosbeak, or Virginia nightingale, is a finch, too, His 
voice is so fine that this ruby-coated and crested singer is often 
caged, as is his cousin the canary. 

The eaves of the doctor’s barn was a great place for swallows. 
A big colony of them skimmed and Wheeled about, the sun glistening 
on their blue-black forked wings and tails. They chattered, scolded 
intruders, and sang sweet gossipy songs to each other. The wrens 
came right up to the house and sang from the roof, the low bushes 
and the ground. Bill up, perky tail jerking about, this merry singer 
is a nervous little scold at times. “Five inches of brown fury in 
feathers,” the doctor called Mrs. Jennie Wren. She scolded the house 



GOLDFINCH 









224 


BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 



BLUE JAY 


cat, she scolded big policeman-dog, Rob Roy, who was really guarding 
her family. She scolded every human body about the place. She 
even scolded that bird-bully, Mr. Blue Jay. He didn’t get to come 

near her eggs! Plucky little Mama Wren! She 
is the gritty little terrier of the bird world. 

Only the blue jay can rival the wren as a 
scold. A handsome fellow he is, in six shades of 
blue, black, white and dove color. He has a 
crested head, stout bill, excited wings, a terrible 
squalling voice and stamping feet. He is always 
ready for a scrap. He is a good deal of a 
blusterer, and one pair of blue jays is quite 
enough for the peace of a small garden. He’ll 
tell you who he is as soon as he comes, by squall¬ 
ing his name: “Jay, Jay, Jay!” 

The king-bird is as trim as you please in a 
coat of iron gray, a pearl bib and an orange-red 
patch on his head. He cries: “ Ky-rie, Ky-ky, 
ki-yi,” much like a very small yelping dog. He is a cousin of 
the phoebe and wood-pewee, belonging to the fly-catcher family. 
Old red-head, the dark-blue, black and white wood pecker, with 
the red hood, just chuckles and drums. His cousin, the flicker, or 
golden-wing or yellow-hammer, laughs and chatters and drums, 
and plays tag around tree trunks. You can always know the wood¬ 
peckers by their drumming, the big black crows by their cawing, the 
scary-eyed owls by their who-who-ing, the doves by their 
mourning, the cuckoos and the jays by their calling their 
own names. 

You will have to have very sharp eyes and ears to see 
the butterfly hovering of the humming bird—ruby-throat 
—and to hear its tiny mouse-like squeak. And among 
the noisy orchard orioles in the apple trees, the quaker- 
brown-and-fawn colored cedar birds are apt to pass 
unnoticed. You may know them by the brown crest on 
the head, the black spectacles around the eyes, and the 
row of red, wax-like spots across the wing tips. They 
are also called cherry-birds and wax-wings. They have no song, 
only a call note, and soft, polite, talking tones. Their manners 
are as beautiful as those of the blue-birds. They dress each 
other’s coats with the sweetest little bows and lisping apologies, 



KINGBIRD 



BIRD SONGS AND COLORS 


225 


as much as to say: “Pardon me, but there’s a feather out of 
place.’’ 

There are ever so many more birds in our gardens, woods and 
fields. Mr. John Burroughs says forty or fifty song birds visit us 
every summer. Most of them belong to the families of the thrushes, 
the finches, the blackbirds, the wrens, swallows, woodpeckers, fly¬ 
catchers and little warblers. It is the small birds that sing. And 
you can tell what family a bird belongs to by its song and its food 
habits, more than by its colors or its nest. How many of our wild 
birds do you know? Their names and a good many of their pictures 
are in this book. (See Birds, Thrush, Bluebird, Mocking Bird, 
Robin, Catbird, Cowbird, Blackbird, Meadowlark, Oriole, 
Baltimore Oriole, Bobolink, Tanager, Finch, Goldfinch, Song- 
sparrow, Grosbeak, Cardinalbird, Swallow, Swift, Martin, 
Wren, Jaybird, Kingbird, Phoebe, Pewee, Titmouse (chickadee), 
Towhee, Cedarbird, Hummingbird, Woodpecker, Flicker, Sap- 
sucker, Owl, Dove, Warbler.) 


226 


BIRD NESTS AND BABIES 


II. BIRD NESTS AND BABIES 

One spring the doctor got all ready to put a new roof on the 
kitchen wing of the house. Mrs. Doctor said it leaked ter- ri-bly 
every time it rained. The carpenter came one Monday, early in 
April. But on the Saturday before, Mr. and Mrs. Jennie Wren had 

moved in under a broken shingle. They flew at that man. They 

told him just what they thought of him for trying to break up their 
housekeeping. The doctor laughed and told the man to go away, 
and not to come back until the wren babies were out of the nest. 

A hat full of trash was taken out of that hole! There were 
twigs, grass, leaves, strings, rags and shavings, all laid loosely in 
a cup, and lined with feathers from the chicken yard. The wrens 
are fond of building, and any sort of a hole suits them. They will 
use an old shoe or a tin can. This pair built a second nest in the 

pocket of an old coat the doctor had hung up in a shed. If you nail 

some tin cans or cigar boxes up any where near the house, for nests, 
you can always have wrens living near you. In a wren’s nest are 
laid as many as six flesh-colored eggs, spotted with tawny pink. 

Of all the birds in the garden, the orioles made the finest nests, 
putting into them days of skilled labor. Orioles are weavers. The 
Baltimore oriole weaves a hanging purse of a nest, on the highest 
limb and the farthest twig of an elm tree. Sober little olive-and- 
yellow Mama Oriole is the artist. Gay orange-and-black Papa Oriole 
is merely the hod carrier. He gathers long blades of dry grass, 
strands of bark from grape vines and milk-weed, strings, wool, hair, 
thread and feathers. He has to find all these things, one at a time, 
and carry them up to the limb, that may be fifty feet in the air. Then 
he sits near his little mate and sings to her. He tells her how much 
he loves her, and how clever she is. He brags that no squirrel can 
run out to that nest, or cowbird lay an egg in it, or hawk get to the 
bottom of it. She works quietly and steadily, and sings her pretty 
alto with him, sweetly. 

First she takes the longest, strongest bits and ties both ends 
to the twig. She ties hard knots, using her bill to pull the ends 
through tight. She does this until she has a number of loops, as 
deep as she wants the nest, for the warp, or up-and-down threads. 
Then she begins to weave in and out, taking a thread in her bill 



HUMMING BIRD’S NEST. PHOEBE’S NEST BUILT ON A BEAM. 



CROW*S NEST WITH YOUNG NEARLY READY TO FLY. 


WOOD THRUSH ON NEST 


















REED-WARBLER S NEST BETWEEN THREE REED STEMS. 


WOOD pewee’s NEST. 




WARBLING VIREO’S NEST 


WHITE-EYED VIREO ON NEST. 























BIRD NESTS AND BABIES 


227 


and poking it and pulling it back and forth. She weaves a lining of 
hairs and feathers. Finally she over-casts the top, to make it strong. 
When it is done she lays from five to six white eggs, blotched with 
splashes of brown. Then she drops to the bottom of the pocket 
cradle that swings in every breeze, and sits there for fourteen days. 

Oh how her mate sings to her! He flashes about the tree, chasing 
away other birds. He relieves her when she wants a lunch. He 
brags and trills; he tumbles about and very nearly goes crazy with joy 
and pride. But one morning he is suddenly as silent as the tanager. 
His coat begins to fade. There are babies to be fed! Both parents 
must work hard, and keep quiet, to feed and protect those infants. 

If you find a basket-shaped nest as skilfully woven as this, but 
lower down in an apple tree, it belongs to the orchard oriole. The 
oriole’s cousin, the meadow lark, makes a more loosely woven nest 
on the ground, in the high grass along the edge of a meadow. Above 
it she ties the tall stems of grass and clover together. This makes a dome 
to hide the nest and to shed rain. And she makes a cunning arched 
passage to the nest, with the opening some distance away. The 
whole looks, from above, to be just a tangle of tall growth. The 
meadow lark is very clever, as are all the blackbirds. 

The red-winged blackbird makes a loose but stout nest, braced 
up in a cluster of cat-tails or flags, or in tough wire-grass near the 
ground. The eggs are bluish-white with violet and brown streaks 
and black spots. The bobolink, rollicking fellow, is very careful to 
hide his shallow, shaggy nest of leaves and grass in high growths 
on the ground. The bobolink’s eggs are stone gray, marked like 
the eggs of the red-wing. 

You cannot tell the kind of bird by the nest or its situation, 
any more than you can by the color of the bird. Here is one black¬ 
bird weaving a beautiful pocket high in the air, and other black¬ 
birds nesting in loose bowls on and near the ground. Among the 
thrushes the robin is the best nest-builder. The bluebird uses a hole 
like the wren, but in an orchard tree or a fence post. The robins 
make a stout nest of twigs, plastered with mud and lined with soft 
grass, moss and feathers. They use oaks, maples and fruit trees 
on lawns and in orchards, and will even build in stout vines under 
the eaves of porches. 

You should never tear down an old robin’s nest. This is wny. 
A pair of robins will come back to the same nest year after year. 
They will clean the old nest and repair it with new twigs. Mama 


228 


BIRD NESTS AND BABIES 


Robin will put on a new coat of mud, using her pretty breast for 
a trowel. Then she will go to some pool, take a bath, make herself 
tidy after her dirty work, and lay four or five eggs of robin’s 
egg blue. 

Bluebirds will use the same hole in an apple or maple tree, or 
a fence post, year after year, if they find it vacant. Or they will 
use a woodpecker’s hole, or a clever bark cylinder of a nest if you 
put one up. Bluebirds are not builders. They put a scanty lining 
of weeds, grass or feathers in the best hole they can find, and Mama 
Bluebird lays from four to six eggs a little paler than the robin’s. 
The mocking bird that came into the doctor’s garden built a loose, 
round nest of crooked twigs lined with grass, rags, strings and moss, 
in a branch of a pine tree, only ten feet from the ground. Its eggs 
were a pale green, delicately spotted. 

Most of the other thrushes—the brown and hermit thrush and 
the cat-bird, nest on or near the ground. The nests are clumsily 
made of roots, bark, sticks and leaves, rags and paper. The eggs 
of the brown thrush or thrasher, are cream colored, speckled with 
brown, like the papa’s own pretty breast. The cat-bird’s eggs are 
a beautiful blue-green. You may easily mistake the nests of the 
brown thrush and the song-sparrow. Both build on the ground, 
under low bushes, and of rough materials. But the song-sparrow’s 
nest is more thickly lined with soft hair and feathers. 

You wouldn’t expect as wild and silent a bird as the scarlet 
tanager, to build a nest ten feet from the ground, at the end of the 
limb of a wild crab-apple tree, would you? It is made of twigs, 
roots and shredded bark, loosely woven and lined with soft fibres. 
The eggs are a dull white or greenish blue, spotted with brown and 
violet, something like a blackbird’s but more thickly spotted on 
the blunt ends. 

The king-bird, too, builds a big, clumsy nest in an orchard tree 
or maple, right out in plain sight. But he is ready to defend it with 
much bustle and talk, telling everyone that this is his castle and no 
visitors are welcome. The jaybird builds a loose nest, too, but in 
a high branch. And he doesn’t disdain to use the deserted nest of 
a crow. That shows his good sense, for the crow flies high and makes 
a stout nest of sticks and all sorts of things. He stuffs all the cracks 
with moss, and he plasters it outside with mud so it is often good 
for a couple of seasons. Besides, he lines it thickly with horse hair, 
moss and wool, for little crow babies are perfectly naked. 


BIRD NESTS AND BABIES 


229 


The swallows are even better masons than the robins and crows. 
They make their entire nests of little pills of mud, mixed with straw 
and their own saliva. Like the robins, too, they repair their old 
nests. A barn-swallow colony comes back to the old home and 
looks over the wind and frost battered rows of mud and straw nests 
under the eaves and along the rafters. They stuff up holes, and put 
in new linings of straw and chicken feathers. They are so trustful 
of their human friends that they never conceal their whereabouts, 
or their babies. They throw bird-egg shells, nest refuse and every¬ 
thing overboard, right under their nests. Most birds are very careful 
to carry their sweepings to a distance. 

Little phoebe with her “ pewit-pewee ” is confiding, too, like 
the wrens. She builds her nest of moss and mud around dwelling 
houses, and under low bridge arches. The cedar-bird likes a cherry 
or a cedar tree. She makes a large nest as neat as her little quaker 
self, of clover stems, pine needles, grass and shredded bark. She 
is a late builder although she comes early. It is June or July before 
she lays her four or five clay-colored eggs. The gold-finch doesn’t 
build until there are the softest thistle and dandelion seeds to line 
her pretty nest of fine grasses. She builds it in the crotch of a tree, 
not over twenty feet high, and in it lays from four to six pretty 
bluish-white eggs. 

If the orioles are weavers and the swallows masons, the wood¬ 
peckers are carpenters. A pair, working together, chisel out a home 
in hard, clean wood. Old red-head’s nest is often a foot deep. The 
door to it is a round auger hole that goes into the tree, then curves 
downward and swells out. The hole is the shape of a crook-necked 
gourd. Papa Red-head chisels for twenty minutes, then the Mama 
relieves him. Both of them work, in relays, from dawn until night¬ 
fall. Flat-chested, hump-shouldered, stout toilers, the woodpeckers 
have to dig their clean nests, and then dig for grubs to feed them¬ 
selves and babies. They are the hard laborers of the bird-world. 

What a hurried, worried time it is for the parent birds when 
the baby birds are out of their shells. The nests must be cleaned 
of the egg-shells and dirt, and every baby kept perfectly clean. 
Crow babies are naked and very tender skinned. Bird babies look 
to be all mouths. They lie helplessly in the nests, bills wide open, 
crying every few minutes for food, and what a lot of it they can eat! 

Every few minutes one or the other of the robin parents hurries 
to the nest with a mouthful of worms. The babies just lie there, 


230 


BIRD NESTS AND BABIES 


big yellow bills open, and eat two or three times their own weight 
of worms every day. From dawn until dark a worm must be found 
every two minutes to keep a nest full of young robins fed. That 
means several hundred in a day for one brood! 

The bluebirds forage the lawns and orchards for grubs and 
insects; the blackbird the corn-field for cut worms; the orioles for 
small caterpillars; the woodpeckers for wood borers; the swallows 
for winged fliers. Nothing that bores, or creeps, or flies, or burrows 
in the ground, but goes to feed the nestling. Wild and tame fruits 
and weed seeds are hunted, too. 

When they come out of the nests every kind of bird baby acts 
differently. The orioles are cry-babies, crying to be fed even when 
they are able to fly. The wren babies make for the nearest holes— 
a water spout or rat hole, perhaps—and have to be coaxed and scolded 
to safe perches in bushes. Little speckle-breasted robin babies hop 
after their parents and soon learn to be quiet. The woodpecker 
babies are stupid and clumsy, and expect to be fed a long time. 
The jays are scarcely out of the nest before they begin to scold. 
The king-birds are the most sensible of all. They mind their parents, 
stick close together, and learn how to look out for themselves. 

When the bird babies are out you can see several of the prettiest 
things in bird family life. You can see Papa Robin and Papa Blue¬ 
bird and Papa Wren taking care of the little ones, feeding them, 
teaching them, protecting them. The mama birds are busy hatching 
other broods. You can see swallows meeting, and seeming to kiss 
in the air The older birds are feeding the young ones, on the wing. 
And you can see many a lesson given in singing, in food-finding, 
and in skurrying out of sight when alarm notes are sounded. You 
can watch the little ones taught to bathe in tiny pools, or to flutter 
in the dust bath. 

Such anxious, hard-working times as birds have when • bringing 
up their families. No wonder that, in mid-summer, the songs of 
many are silenced; the gay coats dropped, or grown shabby. But 
the robin is cheery to the last, the meadow-lark trills as joyously as 
in the spring, the gold-finch twitters among the late thistle down, 
and the brown thrush trains her family in the art of singing. But 
most of the birds, weary and sad-colored, leave us in silence, and 
fly away for the winter, to grow fat, gaily feathered and tuneful, 
in the warm south. (See names of birds, also Bird’s Nests and 
Nesting-Boxes, with plate.) 


LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 


281 


III. LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 

One sunny Saturday afternoon in June, a tanned, dusty-legged 
boy came to the doctor’s side porch. In one hand he had a soft, 
limp bundle of snow-white, dead-black and rose-colored feathers. In 
the other he carried a sling-shot! A shame-faced lad he was, for not 
a boy in the town would purposely kill one of the doctor’s birds. 
He had just aimed at the tempting singer on the picket fence of the 
vegetable garden. 

“But doctor,” he said, “perhaps you don’t know that this bird 
was eating your green peas. I saw him.” 

“Let us see,” said the doctor. He opened the little crop, under 
the rosy spot on the breast that would throb with song no more. 
Yes, there were as many as two pods full of young peas. But the 
little vestibule to the stomach was packed full of potato bugs—the 
striped Colorado beetles that were eating all the potato patches in 
the town. 

Out on the picket fence the mother grosbeak had all her babies 
in a row, and was feeding them the beetles. Black-headed grosbeaks 
were there, too. In a few days the doctor’s potato plants were picked 
clean, and the birds were foraging in nearby gardens. “ One pair of 
grosbeaks brings up a brood of four or five in a season,” said the 
doctor. “One pair of Colorado beetles breeds to 50,000,000. For 
the good potatoes these pretty singers help me grow, I can spare 
them a whole row of peas.” 

That was a lesson one little girl never forgot. The doctor always 
opened the crops and stomachs of dead birds. In a robin’s stomach 
in June he found a few orchard cherries, among the insects and 
wild fruits. 

“The robin comes to us in March,” he explained to a sober 
little group. “For three months he has nothing but worms, ground 
beetles and dry, winter berries to eat. He brings up one brood of 
babies on such food. No wonder he wants a few juicy cherries in 
June. But he likes the Russian mulberry just as well, and we don’t 
care for that fruit.” The doctor made a note to plant a mulberry 
tree for the robins, cedar-birds and other orchard lovers. Nine- 
tenths of the robin’s food is insects and wild fruits. Only in June 
and July does he eat cherries to pay for the six months’ work he 


232 


LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 


does for us so cheerfully. He eats beetles, grubs, worms, caterpillars, 
spiders, snails, grasshoppers, wild grapes, blue-berries, service berries, 

choke berries, black alder and holly-berries, 
rose hips and the seeds of sumac. 

There were always dead birds for the 
doctor to study. Woeful little tragedies hap¬ 
pened in the nests. Once, a pretty mother 
oriole was hanged by a loop of horse hair, in 
a nest she was weaving. For hours the mate 
made wild lament for his loss. Then, a high 
wind tumbled the half-finished nest and the 
dead weaver to the ground. Nothing but 
insects were in the little stomach—beetles, 
ants, wasps, spiders, bark scales, plant lice and caterpillars. In mid¬ 
summer the oriole eats a few grapes and peas. Can’t we spare her 
those for the countless insects she eats and feeds to her babies? 

A barn-swallow, hurt in some way on its northward flight, had 
fed on cotton-boll weevil, in flying over the young cotton plants in the 
south. And she had eaten flies, mosquitoes, gnats and little wasps, 
and in her stomach were the broken wings of the gad-fly that stings 
horses. The doctor put more brackets under the eaves of the barn, 
on which these little friends of barnyard animals could brace their 
nests. 

For the house-wrens and bluebirds the doctor put up box nests. 
For the phoebes he had a grape-arbor 
and a vine-draped porch. For the 
chickadees he planted a thick hedge; 
for the brown thrush and song-sparrow 
low-growing shrubs. There was a 
mulberry tree for the orchard birds to 
feed upon, a cedar tree for wax-wing. 

And along the pasture he let the elder¬ 
berry bushes, wild blackberry briars 
and briar roses grow, for the fruit. 

There were sumac bushes, too, and alder 
saplings, a choke cherry and other wild 
fruit and seed-making trees. For years 
and years he kept on telling his neigh¬ 
bors that nearly all of our wild birds are insect, wild fruit and weed 
seed eaters. 



CHICKADEE 






LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 


233 


Each kind of bird has its special work to do. Woodpeckers go 
under the bark of forest trees for wood-boring beetles and grubs. 
The cuckoo, or rain-crow, eats hairy caterpillars. The only other 
birds that can manage these are the orioles. In the stomach of one 
cuckoo the doctor found two hundred web-worms. The robins clear 
our lawns; the bluebirds, cat-birds and cedar-birds forage in the 
orchards. The wood thrushes and flickers feed on the ground in 
groves. The meadow-larks, bobolinks and red-wings hunt in the 
pastures and swamps. The swallows, the king-birds, the phoebes 
and other fly-catchers are raiders of the air. Wrens forage in low 
plants, shrubs, and in cracks and crannies of house walls and fences. 
Hawks and owls hunt mice and moles. In August, all the insect¬ 
eating birds make a feast of grasshoppers. One brood of robins eats 
half a million insects and larva in a summer, and not a thousand 
cherries. 

For many, many years scattered bird lovers told their neighbors 
these things. Some of them were laughed at, some only half believed. 
The wild birds became fewer and fewer The nests were robbed, 
the singers killed for their pretty wings. The farmers drove the 
birds away. Then we began to have wormy orchard fruits, army 
worms, canker and cut-worms, tent caterpillars, boring weevils, 
flies, plagues of grasshoppers and Colorado beetles. Countless unseen 
enemies ate up the farm crops, orchards and gardens, and even the 
grass on the lawns. We looked everywhere for help except up in 
the air. 

Then it was that our government began to study our bird friends. 
In the farmer’s bureau in the capital at Washington, thousands of 
little stomachs were opened, in every month of the year. Every bit 
of food found in them was written down. We know, now, just what 
every wild bird eats, in every season. If a bird has a bad habit we 
can help him cure it. The crow pulls up young corn plants for the 
softened seeds. But if the seeds are soaked in tar water before planting 
he will not touch it. But he will go into the corn fields for cut worms. 

We have taken the trouble, here, to find out for you, from many 
bird books, and from farmer’s bulletins printed by our government, 
just what our commonest wild birds eat, and how they help us. First 
of all remember that: 

Woodpeckers, cuckoos, swallows (swifts and martins), phoebes, 
pewees, king-birds and other fly-catchers, wrens, hawks, night-hawks 
(bull bats) and owls, live almost wholly on animal food. The chick- 


234 


LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 


adees are insect feeders, too. They stay with us all winter, and hunt 
out sleeping flies, and the eggs and chrysalids of moths and beetles. 
The king-bird is called the bee-martin, and has been accused of eating 
honey bees. It has been found that it eats only drone bees. Drones 
have white faces, and no stingers. And it catches the robber-fly that 
destroys bees. King-birds protect poultry yards and other song birds 
by driving away hawks, crows and jaybirds. They eat such wild 
fruits as elder berries. Hawks and owls live mostly on mice, moles 
and other small rodents. Woodpeckers eat the fruits of the dog¬ 
wood, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, sumac and the nuts of beech trees. 
No farm, garden, orchard, park or lawn can afford to be without the 
insect feeders. A woodpecker or king-bird should never be disturbed. 
Wrens, swallows, phoebes and chickadees should be encouraged to 
nest near our homes. 

Among the useful seed eaters are doves, pigeons, the native 
sparrows, and the gold-finches or wild canaries. Mourning doves 
eat the seeds of weeds and the gleanings of grain fields. One-third 
of the food of our native sparrows in summer is insects, but the hard 
seeds of grasses, weeds and waste grain is the chief food. The gold¬ 
finch eats weed and thistle seeds, and bush buds. A very useful 
bird on a farm is the quail (bob-white or partridge). Two-thirds of 
its food is weed seeds, the rest harmful insects and waste grain. The 
English sparrow is a pest. He lives in flocks, is quarrelsome, drives 
away our song birds, and lives on us all the year around, eating only 
the useful grains. He is the feathered mouse, and should be treated 
as a pest. 

All the rest of our wild birds use a mixed diet of insects, seeds 
and fruits. The amounts differ with each, and with the same birds 
in different seasons. Thus, from March to June, the robin lives on 
ground beetles, larva, angle worms, spiders, snails and dry berries 
left over winter on bushes. He helps himself to orchard cherries in 
June. Late cherries he does not touch, for then the choke cherries, 
elder berries, cranberries, briar berries and sumac seeds are ripe. 
The Russian mulberry, that ripens with the early cherries, he really 
prefers. Plant a mulberry tree, and fruit-bearing shrubs and vines 
on the edge of an orchard, and the robin, bluebird, cat-bird, cedar- 
bird, jays and many other birds will do little harm to the cultivated 
fruits. In August, the robins eat grasshoppers and wild fruits. 

Three-fourths of the bluebird’s food is insects, the rest wild 
fruits and seeds. The meadow-lark’s food is three-fourths ground 


LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 


235 


insects, the rest waste grain and weed seeds. Orioles live almost 
entirely on insects, hairy caterpillars forming one-third of the food. 
They eat a little fruit in mid-summer. No peas or grapes were found 
in many stomachs examined. All the grosbeaks are enemies of the 
Colorado beetle. One family of grosbeaks can keep a good-sized 
patch of potatoes free of this pest. They also eat the pupa of the 
coddling moth that lays the apple worm. 

The grosbeaks eat some green peas, small fruits and waste grain. 
They pay ten thousand times over for every useful thing they eat. 
Cedar (cherry or wax-wing) birds, like the robins, eat some early 
cherries. But they prefer mulberries or cedar berries. In late summer 
and fall they live mostly on weed seeds and wild fruits. The nestlings, 
at first, are fed on insects. These birds eat the elm-leaf beetle and 
plant lice as well as grasshoppers. The cat-bird eats about half 
animal and half vegetable food. Insects and wild fruits and seeds 
form the bulk of its food. A government report says of it: “The 
cat-bird has a bad name, but it does more good than harm.” The 
mocking bird, brown thrasher and nearly all the thrushes have much 
the same food habits as the robin and bluebird. Two-thirds of their 
food is insects, the rest wild and tame fruits. 

The government pays special attention to jays, blackbirds and 
crows, for most people think these birds have no good qualities at 
all. Jays eat everything; seeds, acorns, nuts, fruits, insects, the eggs 
and young of other birds, and even of the poultry yard. They eat 
mice, fish, snails, and they rob orchards. The conclusion is that 
“the character of the jay bird is not all that could be desired.” 

With the blackbirds it is a different story. Orioles and meadow¬ 
larks are among our most useful bird friends. The red-wings’ food 
is eighty-five per cent insects and weed seeds, eaten in marshes where 
many weeds and crop enemies breed. Less than ten per cent of 
its food is grain. The crow blackbird eats forty per cent of grain. 
The bobolink feeds on insects and weed seeds when nesting in the 
north, but rice when migrating. It is the English sparrow of southern 
rice fields. There it is called the rice or reed-bird. 

The crow does pull up corn, rob song bird’s nests, and kill small 
chickens in the poultry yards. Corn seeds can be protected from 
Mr. Crow by soaking in tar water, and a few kingbirds nesting nearby, 
can protect little chickens and birds from both crows and hawks. 
To the credit of the crow are the field and barn mice, moles, May 
beetles, June bugs, cutworms and grasshoppers he eats and feeds 


236 


LITTLE FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 


to his family. The crow eats no orchard fruit, and only a little corn 
in the milk. He is not afraid of scare crows, but he is shy of bits 
of bright tin or looking glass strung across the tops of corn fields, 
and flashing in the sun. A few precautions will make the crow a 
good and useful neighbor. 

Birds are our little brothers of the air who help us keep the 
earth green and fruitful. They alone are able to keep the unseen 
armies of insect enemies in check. We need their help, and how 
willingly they work for us. Of all our little animal brothers they 
alone can sing and fly. They take up no useful room, and they earn 
their own living. At the same time they make the world a more 
beautiful place to live in. 

They have so many human ways. They love their mates; they 
care so tenderly for their babies. They have such skill, such industry, 
such courage, such devotion to duty, such grace of movement and 
beauty of plumage and voice. Don’t you think, since they help us 
so much, we should be willing to help them a little? All they want 
is protection, and a little help in the kind of food they need, where 
wild fruits and seeds do not grow. Provide nesting places for them 
about town houses. Where they are wanted they will come, year 
after year. Then, when they fly away in the autumn, we will know 
that they have helped us grow grains and fruits, vegetables, shade 
trees and flowers. See names of birds, beside Owls, Hawks, 
Pigeon, Cuckoo, Quail (plate), House pets (cats to be watched). 


WILD ANIMALS YOU WOULD LIKE 

TO KNOW 


Editors’ Note to MofHER and Teacher. —Wild animals have a 
wonderful fascination for children. About the traits, habits and homes 
of those most commonly to be seen in menageries and city park zoos, 
they never tire of hearing. Ample accounts of these animals, giving the 
classifications and main facts by which they may be identified, are to be 
found under the appropriate headings in the body of this work. Those 
accounts should always be read first. The pictures should be studied, 
and drawings and clay models of the animals made. In no other way than 
by the graphic arts, can the facts of life be so firmly and accurately 
impressed on a child’s mind. The child is then ready for peeps into the 
wonderland of the intimate life of wild creatures. Unconsciously, and 
with the keenest interest, he absorbs a great deal of geography, zoology 
and related subjects, and sees the animals in their relation to human 
beings, their place in literature and folklore, and their claim on his 
sympathy. 


I. BIG BROTHER BEAR 

W’y, wunst they wuz a Little Boy went out 
In the woods, to shoot a Bear—an’ he 
Wuz goin’ along—an’ goin’ along, you know, 

An’ purty soon he heerd somefin go “ Wooh! ” — 

’ist that-a-way—“ Woo-ooh! ” 

—James Whitcomb Riley. 

• 

You ought to get Mr. Riley’s poems and read the bear story 
that little Alex, who couldn’t talk plain, but who knew all about 
bears, " ’ist maked up his-own-se’f.” 

Did you ever think why little American boys and girls know 
more stories about bears, and are more interested in bears than they 
are in any other wild animals? It must be because white children 
and bears are such old acquaintances. They have always lived near 
neighbors, both in the old world and in the new. In northern coun¬ 
tries, where white people live, there never have been any lions or 
other big, flesh-eating beasts, so Mr. Bear has had the woods and 

237 



238 


BIG BROTHER BEAR 


mountains and frozen oceans very much to himself. Besides, although 
he can kill deer and buffalo bigger than himself, he rarely attacks 
men unless they hunt him. If caught as a cub, he can be tamed 
and taught all sorts of cunning tricks. And he is so bright and does 
so many almost human things, that we rather like him, even if we 
are afraid of him. 

Little Alex knew that “bears kin climb up higher in the trees 
than any little boys in all the wo-r-r-ld!” that the big papa and 
mama bears “get mad ” if you bother their babies; that they think 
out new ways to escape traps and catch their enemies. So now, 
maybe this story is really true: 

“ Once upon a time, a Puritan boy who came to live in America 
was lost in the forest. He climbed a tall tree to look over the country 
to find himself. The tree was hollow to the bottom. Suddenly he 
slipped and fell into the well-like hole, and dropped plump onto 
something soft and warm and squirmy and grunty. He knew at 
once he had fallen into a bear’s den onto the cubs, and was badly 
scared, for he couldn’t climb out. ’Way, ’way up he could see a 
round patch of blue sky. Then he couldn’t see it. The hole was 
corked like a bottle by mama bear coming home. He remembered 
that a bear always comes down backwards, just as a boy does. 

“Down she scrambled, scratching and ‘woof-ing,’ and backed 
her hairy body right into the boy. He grabbed her shaggy coat and 
hung on for dear life, and screamed. Very likely the bear thought 
a wild cat was on her back. Wild cats have terrible claws, and the 
bear was where she couldn’t fight. So she climbed up as fast as she 
could, and pulled the boy out of the hole. They both ‘ran fourteen 
miles in fifteen days and never looked behind them.’” 

That must have been one of the smaller black bears that used 
to be so common everywhere in American woods. The black bear 
is so bright that the Indians called him “brother.” They never 
killed one purposely. The little Puritan boy was right in thinking 
that she would come down backwards as did the brown bear in the 
woods of England. Both of these land bears do many things like 
boys. They can stand up on their hind legs and “box” with the 
fore paws, as if they were trained in a school gymnasium. They can 
walk on the hind legs and carry a cub or a squealing pig in their 
arms, as your mama carries the baby. They eat meat only if they 
can get nothing better. Really they prefer blackberries, honey and 
nuts, just as children do. And —they make tracks with the entire 



Compare the big brown bear with the polar bears in Mr. F. G. R. Roth’s statuary group. 
When winter comes mother polar bear lets the snow cover her and goes to sleep. Her 
breath opens a passage into the outer air. Toward spring her babies are born. 


















BIG BROTHER BEAR 


239 


soles of their five-toed feet, that look like bare-footed men’s tracks. 
The Indians were sometimes fooled by these tracks of Brother Bear. 
To the people of Northern Europe, who wondered over these human¬ 
looking foot-prints, the brown bear was called “the wise old man 
in the fur cloak.” 

Brown bear cubs always were easily tamed. In Northern Japan 
a people called Ainos fatten bear cubs for food. When small they 
play with the children, and are not shut up until they become big 
and rough. They are as playful as puppies. Hundreds of years ago 
trained bears were led by chains about the old walled cities of Europe, 
and made to dance and tumble and pull carts. Very likely bears, 
and many other wild animals, were tamer in the days when there 
w r ere fewer people and bigger forests. In Yellowstone Park, in the 
Rocky Mountains, where hunters are not allowed to shoot or trap 
them, black and cinnamon bears come right up to the hotels in the 
woods to eat scraps from the table. 

Mr. Thompson Seton tells all about these bears, and their bright 
and comical ways, in his story of “Johnny Bear.” Johnny was a 
cub that worried his mama. He was an only child, and very much 
spoiled and peevish. He would poke his silly head into every sort 
of danger. He was so greedy he often had the stomachache, and 
he got his paws fast in tomato cans and jam pots. So, once she had 
to box his ears! 

We can’t all go to Yellowstone Park and take snap-shot pictures 
of bears from the hotel verandas, but nearly all of us can see them 
in menageries and city park zoos. There you can see black and 
brown, cinnamon, “grizzly” and polar bears. They all belong to 
one family, as you can easily see from their clumsy bodies, shuffling 
walk, shaggy coats and bear-y faces. But, in many ways, they are 
as different from each other as white, black, brown and yellow people. 

The old world brown bear is the tamest of all. He will sit upon 
his haunches, cross his paws over his breast and catch peanuts in 
his mouth. Sometimes, when the band plays, he will dance and 
gambol about like a big, playful dog. The smaller, fine-coated black 
bear is friendly sometimes; but often he climbs the oak tree in his 
pit, folds his limp body across a big limb, like your mama’s rug muff, 
and sulks or sleeps. You couldn’t coax him down with a pot of 
honey! The big “grizzly” bear has an ugly temper. He sits back 
and snarls. Mr. Roosevelt says his real name is “Grisly,” or horrid, 
and you believe it. He is a huge, ugly beast with long teeth and 


240 


BIG BROTHER BEAR 


long gray hair about his head. The big white polar bear, who weighs 
as much as an ox, doesn’t pay any attention to anybody. He just 
prowls and prowls in an uneasy, lonesome way about his pit, until 
you feel sorry for him. His thick fur and fat body make him uncom¬ 
fortable, very likely. When, on a hot day, a keeper gives him a ton 
of ice to lie on, he seems happier. If he turns his big paws up you 
can see that he is rough-shod, with hairy bristles all over the soles 
of his feet, for travelling on ice. and snow. 

Suddenly, for no cause that you can see, the bears in all the 
pits will shuffle over to the bars, rear upon their hind legs and “ woof! ” 
They smell the keeper coming with bread. Bears do not see very 
well out of their small eyes, and are rather dull of hearing, but they 
have wonderful noses for news, especially news of food and of 
enemies. If the wind is right, Mr. Wild Bear can smell a hunter 
and his gunpowder a mile away, and he gets out of a dangerous 
neighborhood as fast as he can travel. 

He can travel fast, too. For all he is so clumsy he can run as 
well as he can climb. But he is not built for jumping, or for turning 
easily and quickly. Old hunters know this, so when a bear chases 
them they sometimes escape by turning sharp corners, or by zig¬ 
zagging. This puzzles a bear and wears him out. Hunters never 
climb big trees, for the bear can go right up after them. When they 
climb small trees bears have been known to put their big arms around 
the trunk and try to shake them down. Or they sit at the foot of 
the tree and wait. As little Alex says: “That bear ’ist won’t go 
’way, ’ist growls ’round there, an’ the Little Boy he haf to stay up 
in the tree all night.” Bears are clever about getting out of tight 
places, too. Here is a story about a clever bear that is told by a 
naturalist. 

A dozen men were in the Rocky Mountains of Canada laying 
out a route for a new railroad when they saw a big cinnamon bear 
in a tree. He had gone up for honey or a squirrel’s store of nuts, 
or just for a nap, perhaps. The men had no guns, but they had axes 
and crowbars, so they thought they could manage Mr. Bear. They 
chopped the tree nearly down, the bear lying still and watching them. 
When the tree began to fall he put his forepaws over his head, rolled 
up into a big ball and dropped. He upset some of the men and sur¬ 
prised the others so that he had time to scramble to his feet and 
run away. I shouldn’t wonder if that bear was still laughing at 
those men. 


BIG BROTHER BEAR 


241 


Bears will not run from danger and leave their cubs behind. 
A cub can never be captured unless papa and mama bear are dead, 
or far away from home. They hide their babies very cleverly in 
caves, hollow trees or under old logs where they make their winter 
dens. They keep the cubs hidden there for weeks and months after 
they are born, for bear babies are as blind as kittens, as naked as 
little birds, and perfectly helpless at first. They are fed with milk 
at their mother’s breast, so she stays with the cubs while papa bear 
goes foraging for food for her. Mama Bear is as cross—as a bear. 
You know that’s as cross as any one can be. She will try to kill 
anyone who comes near her babies. 

All wild animals are fond of their mates and babies, and will 
fight for them. But there are few that are as brave and loving as 
the polar bears. Explorers and whalers tell stories that make the 
tears come to your eyes. In that lonely waste of frozen land and 
water, a polar bear family seems almost human in their close affection. 
In the winter the mother and cubs stay in the warm cave, but the 
father cannot sleep all winter long as the land bears do. He must 
go out into the Arctic night for food. He watches seal and walrus 
holes as patiently as the Esquimo. He climbs icy cliffs. He is often 
carried out to sea on floating ice, and he swims back, miles and 

miles. In the summer the whole family hunt together. If one 

parent is killed the other will not desert the body. Neither will 
leave a dead or wounded cub, but will stand over it, lick the 
face and wound, pet it, coax it to get up, and will fight to the 
death rather than be driven away. They are terrible in their grief 
and rage. 

There are three kinds of bears—land, water and honey bears. 
Of course all bears love honey, and will risk being stung on their 
tender noses to get it. But the honiest honey bear lives in the East 

Indies. In his Mowgli stories, Mr. Kipling has a honey bear that 

he calls Baloo. This animal is called the jungle bear because he 
sleeps in the shady jungle all day, and also the sloth, because he is 
so sleepy and moves about so slowly, and also the honey eater. He 
and the sun bear, who loves the sun as the jungle bear loves the 
shade, have long upper lips that look as if they had been stung by 
angry bees, and stretchy rubbery tongues. They can push this lip 
and tongue into an ant’s nest and suck up a whole village with a 
greedy noise you can hear yards away. They eat bees and ants, 
ants’ eggs, rice plants, fruits, honey and even flowers. In South 


242 


BIG BROTHER BEAR 


America are numbers of honey bears. Some of them climb cocoanut 
trees and drink the milk of green nuts. 

These are about all the animals you know as bears, but there 
are several cousins of the bears who are all clever. They are famous 
climbers, diggers, fighters and swimmers. The raccoon or ’coon, 
that Southern negroes love to hunt, is the plucky little tree-bear. 
He is only two feet long, but he will fight a dozen dogs and some¬ 
times get away. Here is something funny about the ’coon. He 
likes his food wet, or clean, or something. When he finds something 
to eat he takes it to a brook and washes it. In Germany the ’coon 
is called the washing bear. In a wild state the big bears do not seem 
to have this habit. But when the loaves of bread are brought to 
the pits in park zoos, all the bears roll it into the running water and 
soak it before eating it. 

There is one thing bears are afraid of—guess! You never will. 
Mosquitoes. 

Away up in Alaska where the biggest gold brown bear of all 
lives, and the glacier bear on the ice rivers, the summers are short 
and hot. There mosquitoes breed by millions on the vast swamps. 
The tip of a bear’s nose is quite naked, moist and sensitive, like a 
dog’s. He needs it that way for smelling. And, of course, his eyes 
have little protection. The mosquito swarms in clouds about 
poor Bruin and sting and sting him. He can fell a buffalo w r ith one 
box of his big paw, but he cannot fight these little pests. He just 
turns tail and runs! 

Long, long ago, the people in a far-away cold country called 
Finland had a beautiful story about the bear. They called him 
Otso. This story was put into verse like that of Hiawatha, and 
sung by mothers to put children to sleep: 

Otso, thou, O forest lover, 

Bear of honey-paws and fur-robes, 

Learn that Waina Moinen follows, 

That the singer comes to meet thee; 

Hide thy claws within thy mittens, 

Let thy teeth remain in darkness, 

Mighty Otso, much beloved, 

Honey-eater of the mountains. 

Isn’t that a pretty song of Brother Bear? Maybe that’s why 
you like to take Teddy Bear to bed with you. 



t White Persian 2 Light Silver 3 Cream Persian 4 Siamese 5 Silver Persian 

6 Short Hair Tortoise Shell 






















i Manx 


2 Brown Tabby 3 Smoke Persian 4 Silver Tabby 5 White Persian 6 Shaded Silver 
















PET PUSSY AND KING LION 


243 


II. PET PUSSY AND KING LION 

Men have known lions longer than they have bears. They 
have lived right next door to lions for thousands of years, but they 
never called a lion “brother.” They never felt as friendly as that 
toward this fierce, proud beast. He has always been King of the 
dry plains of Africa and the hot jungle of India. In the menagerie 
and zoo he keeps everyone at a distance, and seems to feel very 
much above all the other animals, and even men. If he could under¬ 
stand that he has a cousin so small, so tame, and so playful that 
little children make a pet of him, he might just roar with rage and 
shame 

The lion is only a very big wild cat. Your pet kitten is like 
him in more ways than you imagine. In fact, pussy is a live and 
lively book on lions. Live books are better than printed ones, and 
much more interesting. Pussy walks and runs and crouches and 
springs exactly as a lion does. She watches a mouse hole and springs 
on her prey as a lion does, too. Turn her on her back and look at 
her paws. There are five toes on her front paws, one of them a sort 
of thumb, but only four toes on her hind paws. Did you know that? 
On each toe is a little curved toe-nail, as sharp as a little sickle. 
Pussy keeps her claws inside her pretty, soft fur mittens most of the 
time. But she can push them out as quick as a wink, pull them 
back again and scratch exactly like a lion. Under the toes and the 
balls of the feet are soft, naked cushions, so pussy makes no sound 
when she walks. All the wild cats—the lions, tigers and leopards, 
the jaguars, panthers and lynxes have feet just like the house cat’s. 

Now r look at pussy’s head. She has upright, outward-turning 
ears. She must hear well because she hunts at night. On each side 
of her mouth are long stiff hairs. These are feelers to keep her from 
putting her head into a smaller hole than her body can go through. 
Her eyes are the strangest of all. There are windows, or pupils, in 
them, for letting the light in, as there are in your eyes. In the dark 
these windows are big and round, so they shine like little yellow 
moons. But in the daytime, or in a lamp-lighted room, those pupils 
close to a narrow, up-and-down slit to keep the light out Pussy 
can see in the dark so well because she can open her eye-windows 
so wide. Some of the lesser wild gats shut the pupils of their eyes 


244 


PET PUSSY AND KING LION 


to slits, but the lion, tiger and leopard draw their pupils up into 
little round holes. In that one thing the lion is more like boys and 
girls than pet kittens. 

Put your finger in pussy’s mouth. What sharp teeth she has. 
They pierce like the points of carpet tacks. When she licks your 
hand her tongue feels like a file. A lion’s teeth are like daggers, 
and his tongue is so rough he can scrape bones clean with it. Lions 
lap water with their tongues, too. Pussy doesn’t like to get her 
feet wet, and lions just hate water, except to drink. That is queer, 
for many of the wild cats love water. The tigers of India swim across 
small arms of the sea. They haunt river banks and swamps, wade 
in up to their necks to drink, wallow in the mud, then wash off and 
roll in the sand. This love of water gets them into trouble with 
crocodiles. The jaguar, or South American tiger, likes turtles and 
catches them by swimming. 

All the wild cats wash their faces with their paws. Perhaps 
you have wondered why your big cat likes to go to a quiet, shady 
place and sleep a good deal in the daytime, and then prowl about 
and make dreadful noises at night. She learned that habit thousands 
of years ago when all cats were wild, and she never quite gets over 
it, no matter how tame she seems. She will try to hide her babies, 
too. On farms, where there are fine hiding places, mother cats will 
make a den under the barn floor, in the haymow, or in a hollow log 
up in the woods. If you try to follow her to find her kittens she 
will mislead you in the cleverest way. The mother lion carries her 
kittens by taking the loose skin at the back of the neck between 
her teeth, just as the house cat does. 

The lion makes his den in a rocky cave hidden by bushes, on the 
edge of a wide sandy plain where many antelopes, deer, zebra and 
other grazing animals roam. In one thing he is better than the 
house cat. When he is about three or four years old, and has a short, 
fine silky mane, of which he is as proud as big brother is of his downy 
mustache, the lion picks out a mate to go to housekeeping. These 
two stay together just as human papas and mamas do, all their lives, 
and they sometimes live to be fifty years of age. When they find 
a house that suits them they don’t like to move. You know tame 
cats like places better than they do people, and often refuse to go 
with the most loving little mistress to a new home. 

There’s one thing that lions can’t do that cats can. They can’t 
climb trees. But tigers, leopards, panthers and all the other big, 





A GROUP OF LIONS. 


ROYAL BENGAL TIGER 


LEOPARD. 
























PET PUSSY AND KING LION 


245 


wild cats.are great climbers, so it must be that lions have lived so 
long where there are few trees that they just forgot how to climb. 
The lion has forgotten to have stripes, or spots, too. His coat is 
of a uniform yellowish-brown, the color of sand and dry grass. All 
the other wild cats, and many tame ones, have beautiful markings. 
The tiger is banded in black and reddish fawn. The leopard is 
covered with big black polka dots on a golden fawn ground. The 
jaguar, or South American tiger is dot-in-a-ring spotted. But here 
is a curious thing. Although the grown up lion hasn’t a sign of a 
spot or stripe about him, lion cubs often show faint markings that 
disappear as they grow older. 

Scientists tell us that the young of many animals show, in some 
such way, how their ancestors looked ages and ages ago. Once, 
perhaps, there were no lions, as we see them today, only big striped 
and spotted cats that slowly changed into lions because of the open 
plains they had to hunt on. In the dancing sunspots and shadows 
of the leafy jungles, and in the foliage of thick trees, the tiger and 
leopard are safely hidden, but on level, treeless, brown plains they 
could be seen a long way off. But, while he had to paint out his spots 
and stripes, the African lion grew a beautiful dark mane that makes 
his head appear much larger, fiercer and nobler than that of any 
other cat. He grew a tuft of hair and a horny cone on the tip of 
his tail to lash himself into a rage. And he grew a terrifying roar, too! 

Maybe you have heard a big African lion roar in a zoo. You 
can hear him a mile. That roar starts all the other animals. The 
tiger screams, the jaguar cries piouw! something like pussy’s meouw. 
The bear “ ’ist growls,” the buffaloes bellow, the elephants trumpet. 
All the fierce, fighting animals are thrown into a rage by that roar, 
and the timid ones tremble with fear. Some of them run, but others 
seem unable to move. 

Maybe that is why the lion roars when he is on the hunt—to 
paralyze his prey with fear. He lies on the bank of a stream waiting, 
as pussy waits at a mouse hole, for some timid antelope, whose only 
safety is in his heels, to come down to drink. Then he springs with 
a roar. The way he roars in a zoo isn’t anything to what he can do 
in the roaring line at home. He has several kinds of roars. Some¬ 
times he moans like the wind in the tree tops. Sometimes he rumbles 
like faraway thunder. Sometimes he gets his neighbors to help 
him give a desert concert on a dark, stormy night. But it is worst 
of all when one party of lions meets another and they all roar at 


246 


PET PUSSY AND KING LION 


each other for hours. You know what a dreadful noise.cats can 
make when they quarrel on the back fence. Lions act the same 
way, only worse, and they can be heard miles and miles. 

Ostriches must admire the lion’s roar, for they seem to try to 
imitate it. African travellers say they do it very well, too. Hunters 
can be sure of one thing. A roar at night means a lion; a roar in 
the daytime an ostrich. 

Did you ever see a cat miss catching a mouse? She looks ashamed 
of herself. She peeps around to see if any one noticed her failure, 
and slinks away as if she wanted to forget it. Lions do the same. 
And they do not attack elephants and other big, thick skinned, 
tusked animals that fight back. Nor do they attack men, unless 
they are wounded or driven into a corner, or sometimes when the 
man is asleep and helpless and the lion very hungry. Some African 
travellers say that if a man meets a lion, all he has to do is to stand 
still and look him square in the eyes and Mr. Lion will back away, 
then turn tail and run. I wouldn’t like to put that to the test, would 
you? But a lion is used to seeing animals run from him in fear. 
It might puzzle him to see a man stand still and stare at him. Wild 
animals are a good deal like human beings in that. They are afraid 
of what they don’t understand. 

Travellers say the lion isn’t nearly as brave as the tiger, nor 
as noble as he looks. He slinks along through tall grass, or behind 
bushes with his head hanging below his shoulders. He never fights 
any animal that can defend itself unless he is forced to do so. The 
only time he shows great courage is in defending his mate and cubs, 
and then the lioness is fiercer than the lion. In captivity, of course, 
he is savage. He thinks of himself as in a trap, very likely, and that 
every man who comes near him wants to kill him. That makes 
him very dangerous. 

How do you suppose this big, bearded wild cat is ever tamed 
so far that he lets his trainer use him for a pillow, drive him to a 
cart, play see-saw with him, wrestle with him, and jump through 
a hoop at a word of command? 

The training of a lion is simple. He has to be made to under¬ 
stand two things. One is that his trainer is his friend and means 
to use him well. The other is that the man is master. The trainer 
begins by going up near the bars, talking to the lion kindly, and 
throwing him some meat. It isn’t long before the lion learns to 
know and to watch for the man who feeds him. Next the trainer, 



PAINTED BY WILLIAM A. DRAKE, A. N. A. 

ON GUAR D 


‘Don’t you dare hurt our babies or their mama,” King Lion seems to say. He is a good papa. Besides guarding his mate 
and their babies he helps her get food for them and teach them how to get food for themselves. There are 

usually three babies in a lion family. 



















PET PUSSY AND KING LION 


247 


while talking, puts a stout stick between the bars. With a terrible 
roar the lion springs on the stick and crushes it into splinters. But 
the trainer keeps right on putting sticks between the bars, talking 
kindly to the lion and feeding him. After a few weeks the lion pays 
no attention to the stick, or he smells it and walks away. Finally 
he lets the trainer touch him with it, and stroke his back as he eats. 

It is several months before the trainer tries going into the cage. 
He takes the stick with him and a stout chair. He sits down and 
pretends to read a newspaper. The lion crouches back in a corner 
and growls. If he should spring the trainer has the chair up, legs 
out, before his face, and Mr. Lion gets a bumped head and a blow 
on the nose—his tenderest spot. Very slowly he learns to trust 
his master and to fear him, too. Sometimes a lion seems to grow 
fond of his trainer. 

When petted he will purr as if he had a whole swarm of bees 
in his throat. But trainers never forget that the tamest lion is always 
dangerous. He is sly and treacherous, too. Without an instant’s 
warning he may forget all his lessons and turn on his best friend. 
So the trainer watches and watches, never quite trusting even a lion 
that he has brought up from a cub. 

Lion cubs are the cunningest babies. They really look and 
act more like puppies than kittens. They are as fat and clumsy 
and woolly as Newfoundland puppies. In Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, 
a keeper takes a family of three or four lion kittens out onto a grass 
plot for a romp. Crowds and crowds of people watch them tumble 
over each other. They are not born blind as tame kittens are, but 
they are just as helpless, and for a long time cannot even lap milk 
from a saucer. Sometimes the mother lion, soured on the world by 
being shut in a cage, won’t have anything to do with her babies. 
They die unless some other animal with milk can be found to nurse 
them. The very best foster mother for lion kittens is—not a cat, 
hut a dog. A shepherd or collie dog is the best, for she is trained 
to care for sheep. She nurses them, fondles them and seems as proud 
of them as a mother. But in a few months they grow so big and 
rough that she looks at them in wonder and alarm, as a hen looks 
at a duckling she has hatched to take to the water. She must think 
the fairies have changed these babies in their cradles, for they are 
none of hers! And by the time they are old enough to be weaned 
they are too much for doggie. 


248 


HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS 


III. HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS! 

That is what the children shout when a circus parade marches 
through a town. The elephant is the children’s delight. Draped in 
purple and gold he walks with the tread of an emperor before a 
conquered army. All the other wild beasts are in cages, but he, the 
largest and strongest of them all, a three-ton mountain of an animal, 
is led by his keeper as if he were a big, good-natured dog. And oh, 
if there is a baby elephant the children just about go crazy. 

No wonder! Baby elephants are scarce. Even in her home on 
African plains, or in the East Indian jungle, a mother elephant has 
a baby only once in ten or fifteen years, so there are never more 
than a few babies at a time in a big herd of a hundred or more 
elephants. It’s a great event when one is born in captivity. Such 
a baby! He weighs two hundred pounds, at birth, is nearly three 
feet high and has a funny little trunk about as long as your twelve- 
inch ruler. And you never saw such a baby for growing! At the 
age of one year he weighs a half a ton. When he is hungry he squats 
in front of his mama, spreading his hind legs out behind him, pokes 
his head up between her front legs and sucks milk with his mouth, 
just like a calf. She pets him with her trunk while he nurses, and 
she doesn’t wean him until he is two years old. 

A baby elephant is as solemn as an Indian papoose. But in 
his own clumsy way he is very playful. He plays hide-and-seek between 
his mother’s legs, and pulls her foolish little tail with his trunk. When 
anything alarms him, he gets right under her and shuffles along that 
way. And when she crosses a stream he climbs on her back until 
he learns to swim. In one thing he doesn’t get over being a baby, 
until he is a grandfather. He spends half his life cutting new teeth. 
An elephant has twenty-four grinding teeth in all, but he cuts and 
uses only four at a time. As one set wears down a new set appears 
just behind. Maybe it is cutting teeth that makes a big, fifty-year- 
old elephant peevish, sometimes. 

There is a secret that a very young baby elephant can tell you 
that even his mama doesn’t know. Ages ago there were elephants 
and mammoths and mastodons that were much like them, only 
twice as big as any elephant living today. They lived all over Europe 
and America, some of them away up in the coldest countries where 



The Elephant has a big brain as well 
as a big body, and he uses it. Notice 
how the one on your right tsr-* 
kneels and seizes that peg be¬ 
cause he can't get his trunk un- if jdtf 
der the beam as his partner is /M 
doing. 


GOOD TEAM WORK 

We are piling teakwood 
beams in Rangoon, India— 
my partner and I. 


1 pick up a 
little one like 
this all by my¬ 
self, stand it ^ 
on end ^ 
against S&M 
the 
l'ilc. 


EMPERORS OF INDIA 

Elephants passing review¬ 
ing stand at the Durbar— 
the great ceremony at which 
England’s king is declared 
Emperor of India. 


“Draped in purple and gold, he walks with the tread 
of an Emperor before a conquered army.” 


This is the way 
I use my foot to 
crack a cocoanut 
or roll a log. 


And this 
is how I 
roll great 
big logs in 
the forest. 


ANOTHER WAY OF “*'•-N. 

MOVING BEAMS . 

This is how we push beams 
along the ground with our 

tusks. My partner is letting me be the whole show 
while you are watching us. 



















A HERD OF WILD ELEPHANTS 


















HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS 


249 


polar bears live today. They were covered thick with wool and hair, 
and had long hairy manes like those of the buffaloes, falling over 
huge curved tusks twice as long as a tall man. Today, you know, 
elephants havn’t a sign of a hair on them. Their thick gray hides 
are as bare as rubber blankets. But baby elephants, when first born, 
have a scanty covering of silvery brown wool all over their pink, 
piggy skins. That tells very plainly of a time when all elephants 
had fur. 

It takes an elephant thirty years to grow up to eleven feet in 
height, twelve in length, with tusks and trunk six or eight feet long, 
and a weight of three tons. He has plenty of time, for, if he is lucky, 
he may live to be a hundred or more years old. The hide of a full 
grown elephant is an inch thick, and full of folds and creases and 
wrinkles. The ears of an African elephant are as big and floppy as 
rubber door mats. He can smell as well as a dog or a bear, and see 
and hear much better. His legs are as thick and solid as the pillars 
under a portico, and his feet are scolloped with five thick toes around 
a pad. An elephant’s knees and elbows are so near the ground that 
it is hard for him to get up and down. He can’t curl his legs under 
him as many animals do, but kneels and sprawls his hind legs out 
behind. Sometimes he seems to say: “What’s the use in trying to 
lie down at all?” So, when he is sleepy, he just leans up against a 
big tree, or a rock. And he has a stiff neck all the time. His neck 
is so short and thick that it is very little use for turning, although 
he can toss his head up and down like a bull. 

For such an e-nor-mous animal the elephant is wonderfully 
active. He can shuffle along, in his clumsy way, nearly as fast as 
a horse can run. East Indian elephants climb steep mountains as 
pack animals, and are very sure-footed. All elephants are good 
swimmers and hard fighters if attacked. They can charge the enemy 
like cavalry horses. Their tusks are terrible weapons, and no other 
animal living has such a wonderful tool-chest as the elephant’s trunk. 
It is a nose to breathe and smell with, an upper lip, a finger and 
thumb, a stout arm, a water tank, a club to fight with, and a musical 
instrument all in one. As hollow as a garden hose, that trunk is 
made up of forty thousand muscles laid length-wise, cross-wise and 
on the bias, in a net-work that gives it great strength and variety 
of motion. With its trunk the elephant can pick up a peanut, pet 
its baby, pull a small tree up by the roots, give itself a shower or 
dust bath, break off a leafy branch and shoo away the flies, slap 


250 


HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS 


a saucy tiger senseless, and bellow like the bass horn in a brass 
band. 

But why is it called trunk? 

Don’t you suppose nearly every little boy and girl in the world 
has asked that question ? And got an answer something like this: 
“Oh, just because it is.” But that is no answer. The name is really 
trompe, a French word meaning trumpet, for the trumpeting sound 
the animal makes. English people misunderstood the word and 
changed it to-trunk. Besides it looks like the stem or trunk of a 
small tree turned upside down; and there is a hollow tube for forcing 
pellets through, something like a pop-gun, that is called a trunk. 
So trunk seems just about as good a name as trompe, doesn’t it? 

Elephants live *in herds like buffaloes. There are from twenty- 
five to one hundred in a herd. They wander about together in the 
woods and on the open plains of Africa and India, wherever there 
is plenty of grass, low plants and trees, near water. They sleep in 
the forest. As early as three o’clock, long before the sun rises, a 
herd is on the march. They go in single file, the big bulls in front 
breaking a path through the thickest jungle. Then come the cows, 
and last the mothers with babies. This is the order in which Indians 
travel, the warriors ahead and the children in the rear. 

If danger threatens, the bulls trumpet a warning. All the others 
stop, and the bulls line up to give battle to the enemy. Some people 
think that only the flesh-eating animals are dangerous. This is a 
mistake, as you must know when you remember how savage some 
bulls of domestic cattle are. African bull elephants are so fierce 
the lion tucks his tail between his legs and slinks away, when he 
hears one trumpeting. The tiger sometimes attacks the smaller 
East Indian elephant, and often gets the worst of it. 

African explorers and travellers say a charging bull elephant 
is a grand and terrible sight. He blows his mighty trumpet in a 
blast that can be heard for miles, lowers his head with its six foot 
tusks, and tosses his trunk up out of danger. He knows how easily 
that precious member, all delicate muscles and nerves, might be 
injured by claw or spear. When a tiger springs, the bull catches 
him on the tusks, tosses him twenty feet in the air, gives him a swing¬ 
ing blow with the trunk as he comes down that stuns him, then 
pins him to the earth with the tusks, or tramples him under his three 
tons of weight. It is said that every pair of tusks brought out of 
Africa has cost one or more human lives. 


HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS 


251 


Usually a herd marches to the feeding ground unmolested. 
There they pull the grass up by the roots, beat the earth off on their 
front legs, give the bundles neat twists, and poke them back into 
their mouths. They pull up bushes and break off high leafy branches. 
They even uproot small trees, prying with the tusks and pulling 
with the trunks. Cocoanuts are cracked and shelled by rolling under¬ 
foot. They are fond of palm nuts, sugar cane and yams, a kind of 
sweet potatoes. In captivity elephants are fed on hay and carrots, 
but they just love peanuts, popcorn and candy. A herd of one 
hundred wild elephants will eat ten tons of food a day. 

About sunrise the whole herd takes a bath. They go on a shuffling 
run to the nearest “ole swimmin’” hole. Into the water they go 
up to their eyes. They frolic like so many school boys, shouting 
at the tops of their—trumpets, slapping and splashing water over 
each other. The babies ride on their mother’s backs, slide off and 
learn to swim. Often a herd plays in the water for an hour. Before 
coming out they suck up as much as ten gallons of water each, 
through the hollow trunks and stow it away in water pockets in 
their stomachs. Later in the day, when they want a drink or a 
shower bath, they bring this water up and use it. The camel seems 
to be the only other animal that has storage tanks inside for 
water. 

Old hunters in Africa and India say members of a herd look 
alike as do members of a human family. Some herds are made up 
of animals that are large and strong and bright minded. In other 
herds the animals are smaller, weaker and more stupid. In East 
India the natives speak of elephants as low caste and high caste, 
and say there is as much difference as there is between breeds of 
dogs and horses. And no hunter will go after a “rogue” elephant. 
A “rogue” is a tramp elephant. For some reason he has left his 
herd, or been driven out. No other herd will admit him, so he turns 
sour and becomes very dangerous, fighting every living thing he 
meets, and destroying what he cannot eat. 

Elephants hate flies. The flies and stinging insects of hot 
countries are large and thick and tough as is the elephant’s hide 
they manage to get into the folds and creases and sting him. He 
fights his tormentors with shower and dust baths and fly brushes. 
When they drive him frantic he rushes into the water to wash them 
off. There he finds a friend. It is tie long-legged water crane who 
stands on the elephant’s back and picks out the flies to eat. Some- 


252 


HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS 


times this feathered friend and a baby elephant may both be seen 
riding on Mama Elephant’s back. 

Of two things the elephant is afraid—fences and mice. A fence 
looks like some of the traps used by native tusk-hunters. The 
flimsiest fence of reeds, bamboo or barbed wire will usually keep 
a herd of hungry elephants out of a sugar or yam field, or will keep 
them prisoners inside a stockade. As for a mouse, very likely the 
elephant thinks it a big insect that will run up his trunk. He throws 
the trunk up out of danger, bellows with rage and trembles with fear. 

The huge African elephant is very wild, hard to tame and teach, 
and is of uncertain temper. Even the cows have tusks. A good 
specimen is not often seen in a menagerie. Your papa and mama 
will remember Mr. Barnum’s famous African elephant “Jumbo.” 
The East Indian elephant is smaller, more easily captured and tamed. 
He readily learns to do useful work and to perform tricks. He becomes 
fond of a kind master, and likes children, dogs and peaceable animals. 
He is not brighter than the dog, but because of his size and strength 
and his wonderful tusks and trunk, he can do a great many things 
that a dog cannot do. In India, the elephant piles half-ton teak 
logs in lumber yards, and is used in the timber and stone work of 
roads and bridges. He can push a cannon across a bog, carry a 
load over a mountain, and help sportsmen hunt and kill tigers. East 
Indian rulers all have troops of elephants to use in warfare, and to 
ride in royal processions. In Siam, the white elephant is a sacred 
animal and has a place on the national flag. 

How old and wise the elephant in the menagerie looks. It is 
very comical to see such a heavy, clumsy animal stand on his hind 
legs or his head, dance to music, blow a horn, beat a drum, ring 
a bell or fire a gun. He kneels to let children and dogs and monkeys 
climb into a canopied throne on his back, then rises and takes them 
for a ride. He plays see-saw with another elephant, forms pyramids, 
rolls barrels, piles boxes and does many other hard things. The 
elephant has a good memory. He never forgets a trick he has once 
learned. He remembers an unkindness for years, and is sure to 
watch patiently for his chance, and to take terrible revenge on a 
keeper who mistreats him. 

Hundreds of years ago the Greeks and Romans trained elephants 
to perform in their open-air circuses. Ancient writers tell of elephants 
that rocked cradles of babies whenever they cried, and of others 
that walked and danced on tight ropes. One writer says that 


HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS 


253 


elephants were sometimes found practising their tricks at night, 
because they liked to do them, perhaps, or because they had been 
punished for not performing properly and wanted to know their 
lessons better. That seems hard to believe, but some trainers of 
today say they have watched these huge animals saying over their 
lessons out of school. 

Don’t you think these clever animals deserve all the petting 
and peanuts they can get? Some elephants will eat right out of a 
child’s little hand. But you should always ask his keeper if it is safe 
to feed an elephant in that way, and what he likes best. And be 
very careful not to touch his precious trunk. 


254 


THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 


IV. THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 

Can you think of anything that will collect a crowd of children 
so quickly, or keep them happy so long as an organ grinder with 
a monkey? 

The music is often very dreadful, but the monkey is very funny. 
His tiny wrinkled face is so comical. It looks like that of a wise 
little old man who has seen a lot of trouble. Like a good clown in 
a circus, a monkey doesn’t have to do anything to make people 
laugh—except just be a monkey. He is so wonderfully agile, quick 
and clever. He mimics everything people do. He “makes faces,” 
he dances to music; he runs up the telegraph pole, a tree or a porch 
pillar, and he swings from bars like a trapeze performer. He picks 
up pennies, stuffs them in the pocket of his absurd red jacket, and 
pulls off his collar-box-cap for thanks. 

It seems a pity that a monkey can only chatter or scream or 
scold, for he tries ever so hard to talk. Such a mischief he is, too. 
If he sees a chance he will snatch a little girl’s doll or a lady’s hat 
and tear them in pieces. He knows very well such behavior is naughty, 
for he scrambles out of reach of punishment, and chuckles with glee 
over the trick. It’s easy to forgive the little rascal, for the next instant 
he does something engaging. He cuddles his baby, or cracks a peanut 
like a squirrel, turns a hand-spring for you, or slyly pulls another 
monkey’s tail. 

Just what is a monkey? 

In the big cage in a menagerie or zoo, there are a dozen or more 
varieties of monkeys as unlike each other as a fox terrier is unlike 
a St. Bernard dog. Some monkeys are as small as chipmunks, and 
others are as large as cocker spaniels. There are monkeys with long 
curly tails, with straight tails, bushy tails, stub tails, and no tails 
at all. Some have very hairy, and others nearly naked faces. There 
are dog-faced and purple-faced monkeys; monkeys with white cheeks, 
with turned-up noses, with tufted ears, with whiskers, mufflers and 
bonnets. Most of them are black, gray or some shade of brown, 
from silver-fawn to seal. But there are dandified monkeys with 
green coats and orange vests. 

Many people call all the big apes—the gorillas, chimpanzees, 
orang-ootans, baboons and gibbons, monkeys. But we won’t do 


HOW CLEVER THESE MONKEYS ARE! 



J IIIS trained monkey is named Susie. She was brought from monkey- 
land and taught to pick up a cube, a ball, a cylinder and other shapes 
just as if she were in a kindergarten. Her big, wild relation (l) is 
climbing through the tree tops with her baby. Figures 2, 3 and 4 show' 
how these ‘‘acrobats’’ swing from tree to tree. 


Here Susie is asked by the little boy to pick out 
various colors of cloth. Her owner is snapping his 
fingers to get her close attention. Monkeys are like 
little people—they do best when they pay close at¬ 
tention. 






























































THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 


255 


that. These huge, man-like creatures from the Old World are savage, 
and have to be kept separately in strong cages like other wild beasts. 
They are hard to catch, hard to tame, and harder to keep alive in 
captivity, so you will not often see one. By monkey, children always 
mean one of the smaller apes that can be tamed easily and led about 
by a string like a little dog, or kept with many others in a big room 
of wire netting and bars. 

A monkey in captivity is happier in a cage with a number of 
other monkeys. “The more the merrier” is the rule in monkey 
land. Nearly every kind of small ape lives in a monkey village in 
the trees, when he is at home. There is a wise old male for a chief. 
He and the older males keep trespassers away from a chosen feeding 
place, and he leads them to a new home when they move. Early in 
the morning and late in the evening, seems to be play-time in a 
monkey town. All the monkeys leap and swing and chase each other, 
and “whoop and holler” as Riley says, like so many boys playing 
in the woods. Spoiled boys they are, too, doing a great deal of 
mischief by throwing down cocoanuts and other fruits and nuts, 
just to see them fall. 

Some of these monkeys have the prettiest homes! They camp 
out all the year round. They love the dense woods of very hot 
countries. In the beautiful tropical forests along the Amazon River, 
in South America, monkeys live in bowers in the trees, among red 
and green parrots, butterfly orchid blossoms, brilliant birds and 
insects and flowering vines. They live in thousands of tropical 
islands in the sea, among palms and fruit trees. But a few are found 
in colder countries: in Mexico and in the mountains of India, Japan 
and Northern Africa, and even around the great fortress rock of 
Gibraltar, in Spain. 

No matter how much monkeys may differ in other things, they 
are all alike in having four hands. The bear, the lion, the elephant, 
the dog—nearly all the animals you can think of, have four feet. 
Little girls and boys have two hands and two feet. A foot has a 
long sole and short toes, usually, and the toes cannot grasp and 
hold things. A hand has a nearly square palm, fingers much longer 
than toes, and a thumb. In the best kind of a hand the fingers and 
thumbs have three joints each, and can all be brought together in 
many positions, and even closed into a fist. All four of a monkey’s 
feet, that he walks on, are really hands, with grasping fingers and 
more or less perfect thumbs. That is why a monkey is so clumsy 


256 


THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 


on the ground. Usually he walks on the outside edges of the palms 
with the fingers and thumbs curled in. This gives him a funny, bow- 
legged look. But just watch him on a tree or a perch, or clinging 
to the wires of his cage. He’s as much at home in a tree as a bird 
or a squirrel. 

Even if a monkey cannot talk, he can tell you very plainly where 
he lived when he was at home—that is, whether he is an Old World 
monkey from over the ocean, or a New World monkey from South 
America. The monkeys in a Zoo always come to the netting when 
visitors appear, for they are very curious and want to see every¬ 
thing that is going on. Besides, they have learned that some ’specially 
friendly little boys and girls carry bags of peanuts. Select any little 
fellow who comes up to you and give him peanuts, one at a time, 
as fast as he can take them. If he is an Old World monkey he will 
stow those nuts away in cheek pouches like a squirrel. He can put 
a surprising number away, for those pouches stretch and stretch 
like little rubber balloons. Look at him carefully. His nose, of 
course, is flat, but the two holes are near together. And when he 
goes up to a bar to eat his nuts, he does not use his tail in climbing. 

A South American monkey’s nostrils are far apart. He has no 
cheek pouches, but heaps as many nuts as he can carry in his two 
front arms, as you carry packages. But he can keep other monkeys 
from taking his nuts when he climbs, for he uses his long, curly- 
tipped tail for a fifth hand. With five hands for grasping the South 
American monkey is a wonderful trapeze performer. The tree- 
squirrel climbs faster, the flying squirrel leaps farther, the bat clings 
better with his wing-hooks, but no other animal can climb, leap 
and swing, and go across a wide forest, forty feet from the ground 
without once coming to the earth. The acrobat of the animal world, 
he seems to be made up of wire springs that are tireless. 

The South American monkey that you will see oftenest with 
the organ man is a small, rusty brown animal about as big as a toy 
terrier. He has a curved hair-covered tail, good thumbs, a rather 
pleasant whistling chatter, and a care-worn anxious face, as if he 
expected nothing in life but bad news. He is bright and obedient, 
so he soon learns his tricks and performs them willingly. He likes 
to ride on a dog’s back, his master’s shoulder or the barrel organ. 
Another favorite of the organ man’s is the Capuchin monkey. You 
may know him by the queer way in which the hair grows around 
his face like a hood or Capuchin monk’s cowl. 


THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 


257 


Sometimes in school you learn a rule, and then the teacher will 
tell you that there are times when the rule doesn’t work. The mar¬ 
moset, the smallest and prettiest of all South American monkeys, 
cannot use his tail in climbing. When children see the marmoset 
they always cry: “Oh, what a little dear!” He is no bigger than 
a chipmunk. He is only eight inches long, with a furry body and a 
foot-long bushy tail that he carries like a plume. If it wasn’t for 
his almost human little face and hands, and his wing-like, tufted 
ears, you might think him some kind of squirrel. 

There is a squirrel monkey from South America only a little 
larger than his nut-cracking namesake. He has a gray face and a 
black nose, but has long hind legs 'so he leaps something like a kan¬ 
garoo. When he is happy he shows it by grinning, and when he is 
hurt tears come into his eyes. In his home in the Amazon forests 
it rains torrents sometimes, as if the bottom had fallen out of the 
clouds. When caught in such a storm, a troop of these squirrel 
monkeys huddle together in the thickest tree they can find, and put 
their tails around each others’ necks for company and comfort. 

These marmosets and squirrel monkeys have some of the noisiest 
neighbors—the howling monkeys. They begin howling at sunrise, 
keep it up until the next sunrise, and then take a fresh start. The 
woods ring and echo with their howls. They travel all the time 
through the high branches of the trees, the males leading, and the 
mother monkeys following, each with one or two babies clinging 
to her neck with fingers and tails. They swing by their tails and 
catch the next limb with a hand. The brown howler is bad enough, 
but the red howler makes the night hideous with his cries. They 
screech as if all the animals in the forest were eating each other 
up. Some zoos won’t have Little-old-man-howler, as he is called, 
at all. 

Another South American monkey is the Saki. He has a ruddy 
back, and an almost human habit of cupping a hand and dipping 
up water when he wants to drink. He is so delicate that he seldom 
lives long in captivity, so you may never see him. But you are sure 
to see the spider monkey. He has such long slim arms and tail, and 
such a small body that he looks like a big, hairy spider. But really 
he is very gentle and even affectionate. He has little stumps of 
thumbs that are of little use to him, and he is not as agile as many 
other monkeys. A mama spider monkey likes to sit down and cuddle 
her baby in her arms. 


258 


THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 


So many of the Old World monkeys have only little stubs and 
lumps of thumbs that scientists put them all into one family called 
the colobus or cut-off-thumb monkeys. If you see a monkey with 
a very fine, long-haired silky coat, particularly if he has cheek pouches 
and makes no use of his tail, look for shrunken little thumbs. His 
coat makes pretty monkey-skin collars and muffs. One colobus of 
the mountains of Abyssinia, where it is cold, looks as if he were 
wearing furs himself. He has a fringe of white down either side his 
jet black body, a white tippet under his chin, a white edge to his 
cap and a white tip to his tail. 

Another colobus of the hot west coast of Africa wears the hair 
on top of his head in a crest, with a parting on each side, something 
like grandma used to comb your papa’s top hair, in a long fat curl 
called a “roach.” This crested colob looks very comical, indeed, 
for, beside his roach, he has whiskers under his chin. A near neighbor 
of his in the African jungle is the “face-maker.” He is a very good- 
tempered, teachable little fellow. The variety of queer faces he 
can make always draws crowds, so he is a favorite with the organ man. 

Among the brown and gray and black monkeys in a zoo, you 
will be sure to notice any that are brightly colored. There is a red 
and a purple-faced monkey; a Diana monkey, with a pretty white 
crescent like a new moon on the forehead, a white beard and neck 
scarf, and a monkey with a blue mustache above yellow whiskers. 
He is called the mustache monkey. The green monkey is quite a 
dandy. He is dressed in dark green and black, set off with dull orange 
whiskers, throat band, breast-plate and tail-tip. 

At first sight the Hoo'noomaun monkey of the East Indies doesn’t 
look especially interesting. He is a little grayish-brown, spider¬ 
legged animal with black hands and face. But he is a privileged 
being. In his native land he is sacred to Hoonoomaun, a monkey¬ 
faced god. He is never interfered with, so he goes in troops into the 
villages, helps himself to grain, fruits and nuts in shops and houses, 
and destroys things from wanton mischief. The people of India are 
so kind to all living creatures that several “bad boy” monkeys are 
very troublesome. Stories are told of a whole tribe of the Hoonoo¬ 
maun or Rhesus monkeys swarming into dining rooms and eating 
wedding feasts. Another mischievous monkey is the magot who 
lives in Northwestern Africa, and in Spain around Gibraltar. He 
is about as big as a terrier dog. He and all his relations go to a fine 
garden and set sentinels in trees and on rocks to watch, while the 


THE ANIMAL ACROBAT AND CLOWN 


259 


others eat and destroy melons, figs, grapes, oranges and almonds. 
An alarm sends them flying. This bad habit lands many of them 
in zoos and travelling shows, because traps are set for them. 

The street strollers of India, Japan and Northern Africa lead 
about the macaque (ma-cake') or bonnet monkeys. The hair of the 
macaques grows in a frill around the face. These sunbonnet babies 
are quick and clever. One of them loves crabs so well that he has 
learned to swim and dive for his favorite food. The pig-tailed bonnet 
monkey of the East India Islands is used on plantations to climb 
up the tall palms, where men cannot go, to pick cocoanuts. 

Now there is one very sad thing about these amusing little 
creatures, or rather there used to be. Tropical animals, as most of 
them are, they very seldom lived over the first winter in our colder 
country. Like human beings they got tu-ber'cu-lo'sis (consumption) 
or pneu-mo'nia, or some other lung trouble, and died. Steam-heated 
houses were built for them to live in in the winter, and every breath 
of cold air was shut out. They seemed to die all the faster. Every 
spring the monkey cage had to be restocked. When the doctors 
found out that people with tuberculosis often got well if they lived 
out of doors, even in the coldest weather, Mr. De Vrv, the animal 
keeper in the Lincoln Park Zoo of Chicago, thought he would try 
the fresh-air treatment on the monkeys. One fall he fed his monkeys 
more good food but left them out of doors. See what happened. 

They shivered and had to jump around very lively to keep 
warm. You know it is sometimes awfully cold in Chicago, with freez¬ 
ing winds and smothers of snow right from the Rocky Mountains. 
The monkeys lived and thrived. Their bodies grew fat, their furry 
coats long and thick. In the spring more than half of them were 
alive and well. And! Wonder of wonders! 

In the cage were several mothers, each with a baby cuddled in 
her arms. Never before had a baby monkey been born in captivity 
in a cold climate. They lived, too, and frisked about as if they were 
in the hot forest along the Amazon, instead of on the bleak shore of 
Lake Michigan. In the Lincoln Park Zoo, now, are monkeys several 
years old; and all big zoos and menageries have learned to turn their 
monkeys out of doors in all kinds of weather. 


THE SHIP OF THE DESERT 


2(30 


V. THE SHIP OF THE DESERT 

There is one baby animal that rides when he goes bye-bye. 
He isn’t carried on his mother’s back, or in her breast pocket. He 
rides in a hammock on the back of a trained nurse. Something 
dreadful would happen to that nurse if he should stumble and drop 
the baby. Its mother follows close behind them all day, watching 
with her big brown eyes. The owner of the animals watches, too. 
That is a precious baby. If he lives to grow r up he will be worth as 
much as a fine horse. 

It is the baby camel that rides in this way. Although he is 
three feet high, and heavier than a bossy calf w T hen he is born, he 
is so weak and wobbly on his legs that he can scarcely walk. With¬ 
out his mother’s milk he would die. The mother has to go with the 
caravan of hundreds of other camels. A caravan, or passenger and 
freight train of camels, travels fifty or more miles a day across the 
burning sand and rocky hills of the deserts of Sahara and Arabia. 
So the helpless baby camel is put into a hammock, and swung from 
one side of a big, two-humped freight camel. The nurse may carry 
half a ton of other things beside,—leather bags of water, bales of 
cloth and dates, jugs of oil and blocks of rock salt. All day long 
the nurse swings along at a rocking gait. The baby must feel much 
as a human baby feels when rocked in a cradle. 

There is a curious reason why the baby isn’t put on his mother’s 
back. Camels are very stupid animals. If the mother could not 
see her baby, even if it was on her own back, she would be apt to 
think he had been left behind. Then she might turn and bolt for 
the last camping place. On the nurse-camel she can see him, and she 
follows contentedly. 

A camel isn’t really a wild animal, and he isn’t really tame. 
He is too stupid to be either one or the other. For many hundreds 
of years the camel has been one of the most useful animals to men, 
because of his great strength, and his endurance of heat, thirst and 
hunger. But he has never learned to do more than a few simple 
things. He never seems to know or to care for his driver, or for a 
master who may have brought him up from a baby. He looks very 
wise and meek and good-tempered. But really, he has as little sense 
as a sheep, is as ill-tempered as a cross bull, and as stubborn as a 





Photo, Brown Bros. 

AN ARAB FAMILY WITH THEIR CAMELS RESTING NEAR AN ENCAMPMENT. 


A FREIGHT TRAIN OF THE DESERT. 

A caravan of camels carrying spices, silks, rugs and other merchandise. 


A DESERT “LIMITED.” 

A swift camel speeding his master across the sands. 



























THE SHIP OF THE DESERT 


261 


mule. He works, but not willingly, as a horse does. If he had as 
good a mind as the elephant, no man could make him work at all. 

In the hot, dry desert regions the camel is the horse, the cow 
and the sheep of the Arabian herders and traders. He carries all 
the burdens, he furnishes flesh and milk for food, and hair for weaving 
cloth. To the children of America the camel is as strange and inter¬ 
esting as many of the fiercest wild animals. We know less about him 
than we do about bears. He tells you very little about himself, and 
he shows no curiosity about the crowds that visit his pen at the zoo. 
He gazes over people’s heads in a dreamy way, just like that old stone 
sphynx head that stares across the desert in Egypt. One bright 
little boy once said: “A camel is a great, big, ugly puzzle.” Let 
us see if we can work out a little of this living puzzle. 

Don’t go too near a camel’s head. Sometimes, for no cause at 
all, he has a terrible fit of rage. Then he tries to bite and to kick 
the person nearest. The first thing you are sure to notice, and to 
laugh at, is the queer way in which he chews his food. His lower 
jaw swings from side to side like a hammock. His upper lip is cleft 
up the middle. It is what is called a hare-lip. The camel stretches 
and twists and feels its food with this thick, split lip as if it were 
two fingers. He doesn’t seem to look at his food at all. So you are 
quite ready to believe he has never learned not to eat poisonous 
plants that grow on the desert. A herd of browsing camels has to 
be watched as close as a flock of silly sheep. 

Everything about a camel is as queer as if you had dreamed 
him in a nightmare. His neck and legs look too long and sprawling 
for his body. His feet are split into two hoofed toes almost up to 
the ankle. His head is too small, and is tipped up and poked out 
in a foolish sort of way. His long brown eyes fairly pop out of his 
head like agate marbles, from sockets too small for them. His nostrils 
are bias slits. He can open them wide or close them almost shut. 
His rough, red-brown hair looks as if it never had been combed. 
On his knobby knees and elbows and arched breast-bone he wears 
bare, leathery pads like a football player. Finally, his hump makes 
him look as if he had his back up against an unfriendly world. 

One of the few things the camel has learned to do is to kneel 
when he is ordered to do so. At a word he drops. The pads protect 
his joints from the hard ground. He moans and groans as if in 
terrible pain. Fie knows some kind of a load is to be put on, and 
complains aloud. He doesn’t wait to find out if the load is to be 


THE SHIP OF THE DESERT 


262 


heavy or light. He carries half a ton of goods for hundreds of miles 
across wide deserts, with ease. But he groans just as loud when he 
is asked to carry two little children about his track in the zoo. With 
more groans he heaves his big body up and starts to run, or rather 
to rock. 

If you get sea-sick on a boat you would better not try to ride 
a camel. He lifts both feet on one side at the same time, tilting his 
body sideways. Then he lifts the two feet on the other side. So 
you roll over and back. Tossing and pitching, heaving and rolling 
you go, as if you were in a sail-boat on rough water. In a minute 
you are sick at the stomach. Very soon your back aches from the 
jolting, and you get a sharp pain at the waist line. Maybe you think 
this is why the camel is called “the ship of the desert.” It isn’t. 
It is because he carries people and goods across wide seas of sand. 

Haven’t you heard people say: “Handsome is as handsome 
does?” If you could see the camel at home where he “does hand¬ 
some,” you would forget what an ugly, ungainly beast he is. You 
would think how wonderfully he is made for the work he has to do. 
No other animal can live and carry great burdens in such a climate, 
on such scant supplies of food and water. 

It is a wonderful thing to see a camel caravan start from a town 
on the edge of the desert. There are hundreds of animals in a great 
yard, tons of goods in bales, dozens of drivers and passengers, and 
a swarm of dogs. The owner of the caravan is a white-robed and 
turbaned Arab chief. He looks over every animal carefully. There 
are slenderly built racing dromedaries, or one-humped camels, with 
hair so fine that it is used for making artist’s paint brushes and dress 
goods. And there are stout, short-legged, two-humped freight camels 
as shaggy as bears. Indeed, there are as many breeds of camels as 
there are of horses. The fleetest of foot can travel a hundred miles 
a day, the slowest only twenty-five. 

The first thing the owner looks at is the hump. No camel is 
taken with the caravan unless its hump is big and solid. The hump 
is the camel’s pantry shelf full of fat, to be drawn upon when food 
is scarce. Next, the feet are looked over to see that there are no 
stones between the toes, and no thorns or bruises in the soft foot¬ 
pads. Just before starting the animals are given all the water they 
can drink. A camel can drink enough water to last him three days. 
His second stomach is a honey-comb of little tanks for storing 
water. 


THE SHIP OF THE DESERT 263 

The passengers, the chief, and the women and children of his 
family mount the dromedaries. Half a ton or more of goods, the 
leather water bottles, oil jugs, tents, sleeping rugs, bags of dates 
and beans to feed the animals, and the baby camels in their ham¬ 
mocks, are loaded on the stout, two-humped camels. The drivers 
and herders walk, and the dogs tail in at the end of a mile-long proces¬ 
sion. At the front rides the chief and his sons, or helpers. They 
carry guns, for there are robber bands on the desert—regular train- 
robbers who “hold up’’ rich caravans, and steal goods and train also. 

The start is made very early in the cool of the morning, while 
the stars are still shining. There is no roadway or trail. The sand 
shifts and drifts like loose snow before every wind, filling up tracks 
as fast as they are made. A camel caravan travels as does a ship 
at sea. It is guided by the sun and the stars, and by certain hills, 
rocky gullies and dreadful heaps of bleached bones. 

In the hottest hours of the day there is a rest for men and animals; 
at night a long rest. Tents are put up and the animals are unloaded. 
A camp is set up under date palms beside a well. Every foot of 
hundreds of camels is examined. A torn or bruised pad is cleaned, 
dressed with healing salve and tied up in rags. The animals are 
hobbled by strapping one hind foot up to the knee, so they cannot 
stray. 

For food, after a day’s travel, a camel is given a small measure 
of hard, sugarless dates or dry beans. Besides, he crops leafless twigs, 
thistles and thorny shrubs. Camels will eat anything. They will 
chew their own leather bridles, or tent cloth. One witty writer has 
said that a camel can make a breakfast from a Sunday newspaper 
and an old umbrella. He can go without water for three days. 

Day after day a camel caravan travels in this way, covering 
hundreds of miles, and touching at lonely green islands of oases. 
Sometimes a great wind storm sweeps over the desert, hiding the 
sun and filling the air with a blinding, stinging rain of sand. Down 
the animals drop, under their loads. They stretch their necks out 
straight, shut their eyes, close their nostrils to the narrowest slits, 
and lie still. The people turn their robes over their heads and huddle 
in the shelter of the loaded humps. Above the roar of the wind 
and the hissing and pelting of sand and pebbles, can be heard the 
low moaning and hard breathing of the camels. They seem to suffer. 
Yet, when the storm is over, they rise and rock on as before, across 
the burning waste. 


THE SHIP OF THE DESERT 


264 


Although the Bactrian or two-humped freight camel is a native 
of the high, cold plains of Central Asia and North China, he thrives 
and works just as well in the heat and drought of the desert. In his 
old home he is a draft animal, too. He carries burdens over snow- 
covered plains and even mountains-. He sleeps out of doors on the 
snow in gales of icy wind. He eats, not only hard, bitter plants, 
but fish, bones and tough skins. He can go for a week without water, 
and when no other is to be found, can drink the salt, bitter waters 
of dead seas. On the desert he can carry heavier burdens and endure 
greater hardships than the one-humped dromedary, although he is 
burdened with an arctic coat of wool and hair. He is the ox of the 
earth’s waste places, as the dromedary is the riding horse. 

At night, when a caravan is in camp, the little children of the 
chief drink cups of the camel’s thick, cheesy milk mixed with water. 
On the chief’s table is camel flesh, as juicy and tender as beef. The 
herders wear robes and turbans of brown, camel’s hair cloth. The 
master sleeps under a camel’s hair tent. Without this ugly, stupid, 
useful beast, the hot deserts of the Old World would lie unpeopled 
and unknown. The camel knows nothing of his value and cares 
less. Like the desert itself, he submits to be used, but remains wild. 
Sullen and forbidding, he holds his master a stranger. 

There is just one thing for which the camel has a softer feeling. 
The mother camel shows affection for her baby. After the day’s 
march she has him all to herself. She nurses him, she nuzzles him 
with her sensitive hare-lip. He cuddles up to her for warmth. After 
the terrible heat of the day the night on the desert is often cold. But 
it is very still and clear. She can feast her eyes on her baby, for the 
dark, blue-velvet dome of the sky is hung all over with little golden 
lamps of stars. 


KANGAROO AND ’POSSUM, TOO 


265 


VI. KANGAROO AND ’POSSUM, TOO 

If you like to be surprised, all of a sudden, just stand by the 
kangaroo pen in a park zoo awhile. In fact, if you are lucky, you 
will be surprised twice. 

You are sure to wonder, at first, why there is such a very high, 
strong fence of iron posts and netting around these queer-looking 
animals. No taller than kindergarten children, they sit upright as 
neatly as if on three-legged stools. You might say they are three- 
legged stools, for kangaroos rest on two hind legs and a long fat tail. 
From these broad bases their bodies taper up in the oddest way, to 
narrow, sloping shoulders and small, deer-like heads. Their full 
bright eyes glance about, their rabbit-like ears stand erect, listening. 
In front of the breast the short fore-paws are drooped, as if they are 
there less for use than for ornament. 

Sometimes the kangaroo drops on all fours and eats like a rabbit, 
hopping about on his hind legs like a robin. But it seems to be easy 
for him to pick up a carrot, hold it between his paws and eat like a 
squirrel. The keeper knows what he is about when he scatters the 
food, putting some choice bits in the farthest corners of the pen. 
He does that so you can see the animals— jump! 

There! You nearly jumped out of your skin, didn’t you? That’s 
surprise number one. When a kangaroo wants to go across his pen 
he doesn’t waste time in hopping. He just stretches up. on his hind 
legs and leaps. If a frog was as big he might jump farther than a 
kangaroo, but he couldn’t jump as high. It really must have been 
the kangaroo, and not the cow, that jumped over the moon and made 
the little dog laugh. 

No wonder the kangaroo can jump so far and so high. He has the 
biggest and strongest hind legs, for his size, of any animal in the world. 
His hind feet are so long it looks as if he were sitting on his hind 
elbows. At the end of the foot is the biggest big toe! It is in the middle 
of the foot, and has on it a long, sharp, wicked-looking, dagger-like claw. 
On one side of this big toe is a small one. On the other side a pair of 
helpless little twin toes dangle from the leg. The kangaroo’s hind leg, 
foot and big toe are as wonderful, in their way, as the elephant’s trunk. 

A long, long time ago, when there were big, fur-covered elephants 
on the earth, there were also kangaroos as big as hippopotamuses, 


KANGAROO AND ’POSSUM, TOO 


266 

with heads three feet long. Perhaps it was these huge jumping 
beasts that started the story of the giant, who wore seven league 
boots and could step over small mountains. Why, a kangaroo six 
feet high of today can leap over a horse and rider, and then get away 
by jumping as fast as the horse can run. 

These queer animals live in only one place in the world—the 
big island continent of Australia, away around on the other side of 
the earth. Living on grass, small plants and the roots of herbs, 
they take the place of the deer and antelopes of other countries. 
Like other grass-eating animals they live in herds with leaders, and 
are naturally very timid and peaceable. There are a dozen varieties 
of kangaroos. The largest are as tall as a man, and weigh one hundred 
and fifty pounds. The smallest aren’t as big as a rabbit. Some live 
on wide plains, some in the mountains and others climb trees and 
feed on the leaves. Like antelopes, they bound away on the slightest 
alarm. If overtaken and attacked, they will fight. The giant kan¬ 
garoo can kill a man or a dog with one slash of the big-toe claw. A 
horse it will puzzle and frighten by jumping over it and back again. 
A small dog that annoys it, the animal is said to pick up in its fore¬ 
paws, carry to a nearby pond or brook, and hold under the water 
until it is drowned. 

Here is another odd thing. When feeding, two or three little 
ones follow each mother in the herd, hopping around her. On the 
slightest alarm the babies vanish! Not one is in sight as the herd 
goes bounding away. The little ones are not on their mama’s backs, 
and there are no holes in the ground big enough for them to go into. 

Watch the kangaroos feeding in the zoo, and maybe you can 
solve the puzzle of the disappearing babies. There doesn’t seem to 
be a baby in the pen. Suddenly a little head, no bigger than a mouse’s 
head, pops out of the fur on a mother’s breast, like a jack-in-the-box, 
and pops back again. That is surprise number two. The mother 
kangaroo has a deep, flat, fur-lined pocket on her stomach. You 
never suspect such a thing because she can shut the top as tight as 
your mama can snap the clasp of her shopping bag. She can open 
it, too, for the little ones to jump in and out. 

Kangaroo babies need that pouch. When they are born they 
are only an inch long—about as big as June bugs—and blind, naked 
and helpless. They cannot even suck their mother’s milk, as kittens 
and puppies can. Their mouths fasten over the nipples inside the 
bag, and the mother pumps milk into them every so often. They 


267 


KANGAROO AND ’POSSUM, TOO 

live in the bag for months, scarcely moving. The first time they 
come out they must climb up and tumble over the edge of the fur 
pocket, like little birds leaving the nest. For a long time afterwards 
they sleep and travel in the pouch. It is a sort of dining and sleeping 
car to them, and a nice place in which to play hide and seek. 

There is only one other animal in the world that has a pouch 
just like the kangaroo’s. Curiously enough this little cousin of the 
Australian kangaroo lives in the southern part of the United States, 
and doesn’t look much more like him than a cow looks like a camel. 
He is about twenty inches long and has a body much like the body 
of the ’coon or little tree-bear. He lives in trees, too. Little boys— 
especially little colored boys—down South, often catch him when 
he is a baby and bring him up for a pet. He’s the cunningest, brightest 
little fellow, with one trick that you like to copy. 

Did you ever “play ’possum?” You shut your eyes and pretend 
you’re asleep, for a joke. The opossum does this in earnest, to make 
an enemy think he is dead. He fools the dogs of hunters, sometimes, 
by rolling up into a limp ball and lying still. But a pair of bright 
eyes are watching out of the fur, and when the dogs are off guard, 
the ’possum unrolls and slips away. 

The opossum doesn’t jump like the kangaroo. All four of his 
legs are the same length, with five-clawed toes for climbing. He 
doesn’t walk very well, and takes to a tree as quickly as possible. 
His dingy white or gray fur is tipped with brown all over, so it is 
not easy to see him in a tree. He has a long, scaly tail like a rat’s, 
but he can use it as a monkey uses his tail for climbing and swinging. 
He has the sharp, pointed face of a big rat, the naked ears of a bat, 
the five-clawed feet of a little bear, and the pouch of the kangaroo. 
He makes his nest in the hollow of a tree like a bear, but he doesn’t 
leave the babies at home. Mama ’possum carries them in her pouch 
when they are small. There are a baker’s dozen of them—that’s 
thirteen—and they are only half an inch long when they are born. 
She cares for them as the kangaroo mother cares for her babies. 

When ’possum babies are big enough to come out of the bag— 
oh, about as big as mice—they like to ride on the roof of the car. 
There are so many of them that part of the family climbs on the 
father’s back and part on the mother’s. The babies sit in a row, 
clinging fast with their claws to the fur. The father turns his long 
tail over his back, clear to the head. The babies wrap the ends of 
their little tails around his tail, and away they all go for a stroll. 


2G8 


KANGAROO AND ’POSSUM, TOO 


The ’possum is a night prowler. On still, bright, moonlight 
nights whole ’possum families are out in the fields, woods and swamps 
hunting for berries, nuts, grain and roots. They eat insects, field 
mice, little squirrels and birds’ eggs, too. But, best of all, they love 
the sweet, frost-wrinkled fruit of the persimmon tree. This weakness 
for persimmons often gets the little family in trouble. Sometimes 
they are caught in a tree by hunters with dogs. 

Usually they get away in safety. On an alarm—just a rustle 
in the grass, the distant bark of a dog, or the smell of a man or gun¬ 
powder, the babies pop into their mama’s pocket. The whole family 
scampers back to the home tree, and slips, in two packages, into the 
grass-lined nest in the hollow trunk. 

Really, that nursery pouch idea is so clever, that one wonders 
why only the kangaroo and his little American cousin, the opossum, 
are provided with them. 


THE GRACEFUL CAMELOPARD 


269 


VII. THE GRACEFUL CAMELOPARD 

If anyone ever held his head high in this world it is Mr. Giraffe. 
If you could keep him for a pet he could easily poke his head in at 
a second-story window, and wake you up in the morning. He could 
stretch his tongue out, quite two feet, and lick your face, or twist 
it around a curl and pull your hair with it. And, if he would let 
you, you could climb out of the window onto his head, and toboggan- 
slide down his neck and back almost to the ground. You would have 
to put a feed box on the roof of the barn for him, and give him plenty 
of hay, corn, grass and carrots, or he would eat the tops of the shade 
trees. Maybe he would eat them anyhow, for he likes juicy green 
leaves that he pulls himself, better than anything else. 

Guess what kind of an animal the giraffe is. Don’t be ashamed 
if you can’t guess. The Arabs on the desert, who have known him 
longest, gave it up long ago. They named him Xi-raph'a, which 
means graceful. A name that merely tells what a thing looks like 
is no name at all. Besides, the giraffe isn’t a graceful animal. The 
Greeks, who were a very wise people, made another guess. They 
called him camelopard (ca-mel'o-pard) because, like the camel, he 
has a long neck, and his coat is spotted something like the leopard’s. 
Really, the coloring and markings of the giraffe are more like those 
of the baby deer. The Greeks may never have seen the pretty spotted 
fawn of the northern forests, or they would have noticed that. The 
stretched-up neck, and small, arched, gazelle head of the giraffe are 
not at all like the thick, bent-down neck and tipped-up face of the 
camel. Let’s look this queer animal all over and see what he is like. 

He has the beautifully shaped, split hoofs and the slender legs 
of the antelopes, but the legs are so lengthened that his body appears 
to be lifted on stilts. His shoulders are so high that his fore-legs 
look longer than his hind legs, although they are the same length. 
He has a short brush mane, from between the ears to the shoulders, 
like the zebra, and the zebra, you know, is a small striped wild horse. 
He has the fly-whipper tail of the ox. Isn’t that a mixture? But 
there’s more to this living puzzle. 

The giraffe’s lustrous brown eyes are like those of the wood¬ 
land deer, in beauty and gentleness, but they are set out from the 
head even more than the camel’s eyes. Indeed, the giraffe can push 


270 


THE GRACEFUL CAMELOPARD 


his eyes out sideways, as if they were on stalks, and look around 
behind him without moving his head. Wouldn’t he make a grand 
school teacher? No other animal has eyes just like the giraffe’s, 
and no other grazing animal has an eighteen-inch long, barbed 
rubbery tongue that he can stretch up another foot, twist around 
a bunch of leaves and pull them down. It is something like the 
tongue of the ant-eater or honey-bear. In just two things the giraffe 
is like the camel. He can close his nostrils against blowing sand, 
and he can go a long time without water. This is not because he 
has water pockets in his stomach. He simply seems to need much 
less water than other animals. Finally, the giraffe’s long neck, high 
shoulders and short body, that form one curved slope from ears to 
tail, are quite unlike those of any other animal on earth. He is three 
times the height of a six-foot man, and towers five or six feet above 
the biggest African elephant. 

As an animal, the giraffe is half-way between the ox and the 
deer. He is most nearly related to the antelopes, of which there are 
forty varieties in Africa, from the pretty, graceful gazelle to the 
gnu, or horned horse. But, unlike the ox, deer or antelope, the 
giraffe has neither horns nor antlers. The two, solid, bony growths 
on his head are covered with skin and hair, and are topped with 
tufts of bristles, comically like a pair of your papa’s shaving brushes. 
The giraffe’s leg bones are solid, too, while the large bones of all other 
grazing animals are hollow in the middle. Now, do you know what 
to call him? “Mr. Graceful Camelopard” is a misfit. He seems 
to have kept this name only because no other has been found that 
suits him any better. 

Giraffes are very hard animals to find and to capture. Like 
the true antelopes they are less savage than they are timid. Very 
wild and shy, they trust to their heels for safety. They live in herds 
of from a dozen to fifty on the high dry plains of Central Africa, 
below the desert and east of the tropical forests. Their only enemies 
are lions, who lie in wait for them in the brush along river banks, 
and Arab hunters on horses. They are much brighter than camels. 
Two or three of their number always stand sentinel, while the others 
feed. This is very necessary, for the tall giraffes are shining marks 
in an open country. Their short-haired skins ripple and shine like 
satin with every movement, and in the sun the colors brighten to 
orange-brown and cream. In the shadow the colors fade and darken 
to sandy-fawn and seal brown, 


THE GRACEFUL CAMELOPARD 


271 


A sentinel giraffe stands on the outpost of a herd, among the 
trunks of a clump of thorny mimosa trees, his head just peeping above 
the crown of leaves. Among the small trees his legs are not noticed. 
His body appears to be a part of the dancing leaf-shadows and sun¬ 
spots. His head, eighteen feet in the air, topping the low growth of 
the plains, with the open ears, keen nose and stalk eyes, makes a 
fine watch-tower. It isn’t easy to take a herd of giraffes unaware. 
The only chance the lion has of catching one, is to spring on him 
while drinking. Even then a giraffe has been known to kick a lion 
to death. With five minutes’ start the swiftest Arabian horse cannot 
overtake a giraffe. 

If closely pursued, a giraffe can escape through a jungle of thorn 
bushes where men and horses cannot follow, and come through 
without a scratch. His skin looks to be thin and tender, but it is 
really so tough and so thick in places that soft lead bullets often 
flatten out on it. If cornered, the giraffe kicks like a mule. Dr. 
Livingston, the African explorer, says a giraffe’s kick is as bad as 
a clap from the sail of a Dutch wind-mill. The. animal fights w r ith 
his head, too. Having no horns, tusks, or antlers, he does not lower 
his head and charge, like a bull elephant or buck deer. He gives a 
long, swinging blow sideways, using his head and neck as a sort of 
hammer, and striking with his powerful lower jaw and teeth. 

As a rule the giraffe keeps out of trouble by running away from 
it. In running he has three gaits. He rocks like a camel with his 
neck stretched out; he trots like a horse with his head held high, 
and he gallops or bounds like the antelope, but more clumsily, his 
long neck plunging up and down with every bound. Because of 
his long stride he can get over the ground as fast as a horse, but he 
tires sooner. 

Most giraffes in menageries and zoos are caught young. A 
mother has only one baby at a time, an ungainly spotted calf that 
is almost as helpless as a baby camel. When the herd is alarmed 
and starts to run a baby may be left behind and be captured. Full 
grown giraffes are sometimes caught with the cow-boy’s lariat, but 
there are few rough riders who can throw a lariat loop twenty feet 
high and drop it over a giraffe’s head. Great care must be taken 
to give the plunging, frightened animal plenty of rope, or he may 
give a sudden jerk and break his long neck. 

In his new book on hunting in Africa, that all of you should read 
some day, Mr. Roosevelt says the giraffe doesn’t always run when 


272 


THE GRACEFUL CAMELOPARD 


men come near. He got very close to a cow giraffe that had her 
head in a tree taking a nap. So it seems, the giraffe, like the elephant, 
sometimes leans up against a tree to sleep. The animal looked at 
him sleepily a moment and closed her eyes again. As he came nearer 
she kicked at him. When the rest of the party came up and threw 
sticks and clods at her, she showed her teeth in an ugly snarl, like 
a cross dog. Finally she kicked out at them and then trotted away. 

Of all the large animals in a menagerie or zoo, the giraffe worries 
his captors and keepers most. His neck is so long it is always in 
danger of being broken. He has to have an open sky-light in the 
roof of his cage to put his head and neck through. Sometimes, in 
turning around in his small cage, the neck is twisted or a bone snapped. 
In travelling on a railway, the roof window has to be kept shut, or 
the first low bridge would catch the head of the animal. He is not 
ill-tempered, as a rule, but having his eighteen feet of height jammed 
under a ten-foot roof makes him peevish. Sometimes he refuses to 
eat, and sometimes he turns vicious and attacks his keeper w T ith 
his hammer of a head. So, although he looks so gentle, with his 
mild and beautiful eyes of a deer, you should never go very near 
a giraffe’s cage. 

But you should never miss a chance to see one of these strange 
and interesting animals. Like the bison, or what we call the American 
buffalo, the grizzly bear, the African elephant, the Bengal tiger, 
the kangaroo, and many other wild animals, the giraffe has been 
hunted so long that he is rapidly disappearing. A hundred years 
from now the children may be able to see only stuffed giraffes in 
museums of natural history. They will think how lucky the children 
of our day were to see these queer beasts alive. 


MR. NOSE HORN AND MR. RIVER HORSE 


273 


VIII. MR. NOSE HORN AND MR. RIVER HORSE 

“How do you say them? And which is which?” 

That is what the very little boy asked about the rhinoceros and 
the hippopotamus when he came home from the London zoo. Their 
dreadful names made his head ache, and he couldn’t tell them apart. 
He was sure children could have made up much better names for 
animals. 

“Well, why is a dog a dog?” 

“It isn’t,” said the very little boy; “it’s a bow-wow.” His 
papa laughed, for he was a very bright papa and saw the point. 
And then he told the very little boy that a great many things seemed 
to have been named, as a baby names a dog “bow-wow,” by some¬ 
thing about them that a child would notice first. Once upon a time, 
perhaps, a hunter in Africa or India, came upon two strange beasts. 
They both had enormous bodies on very short legs, and they both 
liked to wallow in the mud. When he went home he wanted to tell 
his friends about them so they would know the animals, too, if they 
ever saw them. One he called Mr. Nose Horn. That is, if he had 
been an Englishman, he would have said nose horn, but as he was 
a Greek, he said rhino-ceros, which means the same thing. The most 
striking things about the other animal was its huge horse-like face, and 
its habit of living most of the time and feeding in the water. So he called 
that animal hippo-pot-amus, two Greek words meaning river-horse. 

No child could have made up simpler names than those. But, 
oh dear, when you come to study these queer animals it does seem 
that those wise old Greeks might have found better names. If they 
had thought of the shape of his body, his short legs, his rough, thick 
skin, of how he likes to wallow in a mud puddle and then go to sleep 
in the sun, of his four-hoofed toes, and of his sword tusks like those 
of wild boars in German forests, they would have called the hippo¬ 
potamus the water-pig. And if those old Norsemen who used to 
roam over the northern seas in big row boats had seen the animal, 
these are the things they would have noticed: He can stay under 
water from five to eight minutes, he spouts when he comes up for 
air, his naked skin is oiled so he can slip through the water easily, 
and under that skin is a thick layer of solid fat. They would surely 
have thought the hippopotamus a land whale. 


274 


MR. NOSE HORN AND MR. RIVER HORSE 


The hippopotamus has a body as long as the elephant’s. It is 
from ten to fifteen feet around the middle, but the animal’s thick 
legs are so short that he stands only five or six feet from the ground. 
Really his legs are better for swimming than for walking. He has 
the small, dull eyes of the pig sunk in folds of skin, small ears, a 
wrinkled, scowling forehead, a mouth two feet wide, and a bulging 
upper lip. He can use his sharp-edged tusks for rooting and for 
fighting, as the wild boar uses his tusks. He has a mustache of feeler 
hairs on his upper lip—like a cat? No, it is more like the bristles 
around the mouths of some whales—especially baby whales. But 
he doesn’t breathe through holes in his head and spout water when 
he comes up to breathe, as the whale does. He has nostrils like 
other land animals. When he dives, he shuts his nose holes to keep 
out water, as the camel and giraffe shut theirs, to keep out sand. 

Like other hoofed animals, the hippopotamus lives in herds and 
feeds on plants. From two to three dozen live together on the banks 
and in the beds of the warm rivers of Africa. They are not as bright 
as elephants, neither are they stupid. Not more than one or two 
of a herd are ever caught in the same kind of trap. Where hunters 
are about, the hippopotamus does not snort and blow when he comes 
up to breathe. Sometimes a herd leaves a place that is much hunted. 
They are rather timid and peaceable animals. When they hear a 
sound, or smell something they do not understand, they sink under 
water with only their noses above, and stand motionless, hidden among 
water plants. Maybe you have seen mud turtles do the same thing. 

If attacked, a hippopotamus fights ferociously- A big bull 
hippopotamus will swim under a boat and tip it over, or bite a big 
piece out of the side, with his huge bark-cutting teeth. He chases 
the men in the water and gores them with his tusks. There are 
terrible “rogue,” or tramp hippos, too, as there are among elephants. 

A mother hippopotamus is the fiercest of all, if anything threatens 
her baby. She has only one at a time, and she makes it her chief 
business to look after him. He isn’t born a swimmer, so for a long 
time he lives mostly on his mother’s back. If caught young the baby 
hippopotamus is easily tamed, but he isn’t bright enough to learn 
tricks. When his keeper comes to his cage he opens his two-foot 
wide mouth and begs for food in the most comical way. He asks 
for it much as a pig does. At home a herd of hippopotamuses at 
play shout with loud, harsh voices, but in a cage they creak and 
groan and squeal like very rusty hinges of a door. 




RHINOCEROS. PHOTOGRAPHED IN HIS NATIVE WILDS. 




HIPPOPOTAMUS, PHOTOGRAPHED FROM LIFE. 













MR. NOSE HORN AND MR RIVER HORSE 


275 


When a herd of hippopotamuses in the Nile River becomes tired 
of a diet of water plants, they climb up higher and steeper banks 
than you could climb, break into fields and eat wheat and sugar 
cane. Just think of having a drove of animals in your corn field as 
big as elephants with their legs sawed off, with stomachs that hold 
five bushels, and with the table manners of pigs! Then, sometimes, 
they like to plaster their red and brown and gray-splotched, hairless 
bodies with mud, and go to sleep in the sun just like pigs. The only 
thing that will keep them out of a field is a bon-fire. Practically all 
wild animals are afraid of fire. That is a good thing to remember 
if you ever go camping in the woods or mountains. 

It is the rhinoceros, or nose horn, that ought to have hippo 
(horse) in his name. He is a very distant relation of the horse. He 
has teeth like a horse and a three-toed foot. The horse, today, has 
only one toe in a solid hoof, but in his leg are two splints where, ages 
and ages ago, there were two more toes that dwindled away and 
disappeared. No horse, wild or tame, or any of his near relatives, 
the zebras, wild ponies or donkeys, has a horn. So, perhaps, you 
will not be surprised to learn that a rhinoceros’ horn isn’t a horn at 
all, nor even a tusk. It is more like a corn. 

This is the difference: A tusk is an overgrown tooth, a horn 
grows from the bones of the head, a finger nail is a sort of horny 
substance that grows from the flesh, a corn is a thickening of the 
skin. You get a corn on a toe where a shoe rubs or pinches. In 
rooting about for his food, or in fighting, the rhinoceros may have 
bumped his nose and kept on bumping it until a “corn” grew there. 
That “corn” is really a tuft of stiff bristles cemented together with 
a kind of horny glue. Around the base of it the thick hide grows 
in leathery folds, and the outer layer of the “corn” often peels back 
in shreds, like the rough bark fibre on a cocoanut shell. If you watch 
a rhinoceros in a cage, you may see his nose-horn move when he 
wrinkles his thick, over-hanging lip and forehead. 

Except that he is a huge, nearly hairless beast who likes to 
wallow in the mud and water, the rhinoceros is not in the least like 
the hippopotamus. His legs, while thick, are longer, and lift his 
body higher from the ground. His head tapers to a pointed muzzle, 
and he has the upright, nervous ears of the horse. A regular wild 
horse in armor he is, for his thick, leathery skin is laid on him in 
folds that overlap at the natural joints of his body. Having such 
a weapon right between and below his eyes, where it is always in 


276 


MR. NOSE HORN AND MR. RIVER HORSE 


sight, the rhinoceros doesn’t miss many chances of using his nose- 
horn. He doesn’t try to avoid trouble as the more timid hippo¬ 
potamus does. 

The rhinoceros is a grazing animal, too, but does not find his 
food in the water. He feeds by night on wooded hillsides, in the 
brush or on swamps, and uses his nose-horn to pry up roots and 
his horse teeth to bite off grass. During the heat of the day he often 
takes a cool bath and rolls in the mud. Very likely he goes into 
the water many times for the same reason as the elephant. He is 
tormented by flies and stinging insects. Like the elephant he, too, 
has a feathered friend. Isn’t it odd that the rhinoceros bird should 
also have a nose-horn? He is Mr. Horn Bill. This bird travels around 
on the animal’s back and picks the insects out of the folds of skin. 
He has that choice feeding ground all to himself, for the rhinoceros 
baby doesn’t ride on its mama’s back. Papa pushes the baby along 
in front of him with his horn, as if he were in a baby cab, on wheels. 

The rhinoceros can hear and smell well, but, like the hippopot¬ 
amus, his small eyes are very dim. The bird on his back often gives 
him the first warning of danger by uttering a loud cry. At that the 
animal plunges into the brush or makes for the nearest water. He 
can out-run a horse, but he doesn’t run away, as a rule. He merely 
chooses his own place to fight. He runs into a pool or river, rolls 
over in the water, and heaves up, his huge, black, armored sides 
dripping. 

Ten feet long and seven high, with a dagger-like curved weapon 
three or four feet long on his nose, the bull rhinoceros is a monster. 
He tosses his huge, horned nose, sniffs and snorts and lowers his 
head for the charge like a wild boar. Knowing that he sees badly 
and charges straight, a skilled horseman can dodge him. A lion leaps 
over him, tucks his tail between his legs and sneaks away. An 
elephant that stands twice as high, often weighs but very little more, 
and is no match at all for this big brute. The rhinoceros can run his 
nose under the elephant’s body and kill him with one stroke of his 
dagger horn. 

Here is something about the rhinoceros that is very interesting. 
Thousands and thousands of years ago enormous hairy rhinoceroses 
with two nose-horns and shaggy manes, roamed over all the colder 
parts of Europe and America with the giant hairy elephant. The 
bones of a great many of them have been dug up on the banks of 
the Upper Missouri River. Just think! Enormous two-horned and 


MR. NOSE HORN AND MR. RIVER HORSE 


277 


two-tusked woolly beasts, bigger and fiercer than any elephants 
and rhinoceroses of today, may have uprooted trees and cropped 
wild grass on the very pasture where your pretty Jersey cow eats 
clover. 

So there’s another thing to help you remember Mr. Nose Horn. 
He was once an American, and might even feel at home here in some 
places, the hot swamps of Florida, for instance. Mr. River Horse, 
who is really a water-pig, is a stranger. 

Now do you think you will ever forget “ how to say their names, 
and which is which?” 


278 


WILD ANIMALS NEAR HOME 


IX. WILD ANIMALS NEAR HOME 

Do you live on a farm? Or in a small town with w r oods and 
fields around it? There is a creek, perhaps, a swamp, hillside pastures, 
stone or rail fences bordered by briars. Then you have animal neigh¬ 
bors as wild and shy as any you will see when the menagerie comes 
to town. Take a long tramp over the country after a light snow¬ 
fall. Don’t take a dog with you. Take an opera glass, a microscope 
and a camera. Walk in the face of the wind, or all the little wild 
creatures will get early news of you and vanish. 

Watch for foot-prints—trails of tiny tracks in the snow. Those 
are calling cards. Some nature-lovers can read every kind of track 
as easily as you read print. They can tell where a rabbit has gone 
across country by long jumps, and sat on his haunches in places to 
“stop, look, listen!” They can tell where squirrels have played tag 
around a tree; where field mice have chased each other around a straw 
stack; where muskrats have come up the bank of a frozen pond; 
where a chipmunk has sunned himself on an old stump lookout. 

There are very few places in America where some of these 
rodents—little gnawing animals—are not to be found. But city 
children often know the common gray squirrel and the little brown 
chipmunk, better than country children do. That is a pity, for 
where they are not hunted all our native squirrels become very tame. 

In a city park if you sit on one bench day after day and scatter 
peanuts or popcorn near you, the squirrels will learn to come to be 
fed. They leap on the bench, by and by, eat from your hand and 
go into coat pockets for nuts. Be patient at first, and keep wide 
awake, or you will miss seeing little switch-tail when he slips, a gray 
shadow, down a tree. Flash he comes, stops, “freezes” on his 
haunches, bright eyes watching, ears and plume up. Shelled corn 
scattered about a farm or country school yard will coax him out 
of the woods. Don’t try to catch him or he will never come back. 

What a pretty little fellow! All silver-gray, brownish-gray 
or even black, he is, for squirrels of the same family vary in color, 
just as foxes do. A little ten-inch furry bundle of fun, with a ten- 
inch banner of a tail! He plays tag, leap-frog, runs races on walls, 
rolls up and coasts down hill. He is just as curious about you as 
you are about him. He is very gossipy, chattering all day, but he 


WILD ANIMALS NEAR HOME 


27 !) 


attends to business, too. If he is hungry, he will sit up and show 
you how to crack and eat a nut. Then he will carry away what 
you give him, one nut at a time, and bury each, lightly, in a separate 
place. He will come back for them, by and by, and carry them 
into his high pantry in a tree. 

On a snowy morning his foot-prints will guide you to his elevator 
door, the foot of a tree. Sometimes he uses a hole for a den, but 
often a crow’s nest hammock, roofed over with leaves and bark. 
He cares neither for cold nor wind. His nest blown down by a gale, 
he catches on a limb like an acrobat, or drops on his feet like a cat. 
After eating he washes his face like a cat. 

For the underground burrows of the chipmunks, look in the 
deepest woods, around old stumps, logs and boulders. Look sharp. 
Tail and all the chipmunk is less than a foot long, and he is just 
the color of rotten wood. Even the black and white stripes on his 
back are mere lights and shadows. A sunny, woodsy streak, he 
flashes across the open, stops stock still, upright, alert, and is gone. 
You are not sure you saw him at all. Perhaps you heard his gleeful 
“chip, chip, chip!” It is a challenge. He would just as soon lead 
you a merry chase as not. Little soldier, every log is a breastwork, 
every stump a sentry box, every screen of undergrowth a retreat. 
And for all he burrows, he is not a true ground squirrel. He can 
climb, and his habits are those of the tree squirrels. 

With a last saucy “ chip! ” he is gone. Find his house-door, if you 
can. He hides the little round hole cleverly among drifted leaves, 
shaded by ferns and moss. You will find his snug den below frost-line, 
leaf-bedded and stored with acorns, nuts, and red winter berries. But 
you will not find the owner at home. He has another house or two 
just like it, and his bright eyes may be watching you a few yards away. 

No country in the Old World has so many true ground squirrels 
as we have. Prairie dogs, gophers and woodchucks are ground 
squirrels. The gopher is the ill-tempered, rat-like hermit of the 
garden. You may be sure he is under a flower or vegetable bed, 
biting off roots, if plant tops suddenly wither. But be careful in 
digging him out. He cannot be tamed, and he bites with his chisel 
teeth. The prairie dog is found only on the wide plains of the West. 
To try to dig a village of these amusing little yappers out is like 
starting to dig a well. In the park zoo the prairie dog village is in 
a deep cement-lined pit filled with earth, so these clever little animals 
cannot tunnel and spread over the park. 


2S0 


WILD ANIMALS NEAR HOME 


You can dig the woodchuck, or ground-hog, out. He is the fat, 
sleepy-head bear squirrel. Don’t look for him in the woods. Keep 
your eyes open when crossing a hill-side clover field, or in going 
down a steep creek bank. If you see a hole big enough to thrust 
your arm in, probe it with a stick. If the hole slants upwards, Mr. 
Woodchuck is there. In the winter you can dig him out and roll 
him on the snow, like a flabby muff of coarse, gray-brown hair. He 
is so fast asleep that if you take him into a warm house he will open 
his eyes, yawn, crawl under a bed or bureau, and go to sleep again. 
Some people say he w r akes up on the second of February. If the 
sun is shining, and he sees his shadow, he knows there will be six 
weeks more of winter, so he goes to sleep again. With his clumsy 
body, flat head, beady eyes, and small ears and tail, he doesn’t look 
in the least like a squirrel. But he sits upright to eat, and to look 
about. He never goes far from his hole, for he cannot run well. 
When alarmed, he jumps to shelter like a rabbit. 

Molly Cottontail pricks up her nervous ears at that. “ Not run 
well! Just watch me for three seconds!” she says. Look out for 
bunny. She is the color of dead grass, weeds and snow. She may 
be at your feet, or in that weedy fence corner. She smells you, hears 
you, sees you. She doesn’t know yet, whether to sit still or to run. 
Boys can’t smell rabbits, but dogs can. “ Zip! ” there she goes, a flying 
brown shadow, the bit of white under her tail, a flag of truce that 
no one regards. Poor Molly Cottontail! A timid, helpless creature, 
her only safety is in her legs. She cannot climb a tree, dig a den, or 
bite. She cannot crack nuts nor store food. She can run fast but 
not far. Her home is wherever she sleeps, out in the open, ears 
erect, eyes half-closed, nose wide and quivering. She is lucky if she 
gets forty winks at a time. If no dogs are about, she may creep 
under a barn, or in a wood pile, in cold weather. She distrusts a 
hole, because foxes, owls and other enemies live in holes. 

Th.e one clever thing she can do is to cut tunnel roads in under¬ 
growth. Bunny slips and wdnds through these six-inch mazes of 
runways she has patiently cut with her teeth. There she puzzles 
and tires out dogs and foxes by crossing the scent, and so gets away. 
A sociable little creature, Molly lives a fugitive life and all alone, 
for safety. On some brambly hill-side, you may come upon the 
shallow nest she has scooped out and lined with white fur from her 
own breast. Do not frighten her. There she brings up her brood 
of six or eight babies, in fear of their lives and her own. 



OPOSSUM 



WOODCHUCK OR GROUND HOG 


MOLE 



































SKUNK CROSSING A STREAM 



RED FOX 


COYOTE 



























WILD ANIMALS NEAR HOME 


281 


When crossing a field in winter, stop and listen at hay and 
straw stacks, and shocks of corn fodder. On the stillest, frosty day 
you may hear a crisp rustling within. Look all around for the tiny, 
bird-like tracks of field mice. Most field mice make beds in the 
ground and sleep all winter, but others stay awake. They are the 
bed-makers of our wild life. They can make a warm bed of anything 
—leaves, grass, corn-silks, feathers. Up in the woods you can 
find the tiny trails of the fawn and white deer-mice, and find their 
feather-lined nests in rotten stumps. You will know them by their 
big ears and bright black pop-eyes. Certain mice tunnel around 
pits of potatoes, beets and cabbage. They store clover and other roots 
in earth pockets. In countless hidden places out of doors these 
busy little gnawers have nests of babies no bigger than thimbles. 

The mole you can always find by the long ridge of cracked earth 
that zig-zags across fields—the roof of his tunnel. It is lively work 
to dig out a mole, for he may be at either end, or anywhere along 
the route, or in a side chamber. If frightened by the noise you make, 
he will go deeper and bore a yard in ten minutes. 

In your hand he lies helpless, a fiat ball of fine, velvety, mouse- 
colored fur, six inches long. He has no neck or ears, dim pin-points 
of eyes, and a naked, pink tail that looks like a short, fat earthworm. 
Put the sprawly, wriggly creature on the ground. He scrambles 
about frantically until he finds a soft spot. Then he begins to bore 
with his bony gimlet of a nose. With his spade-like fore feet he 
digs and pries the earth back. In less than one minute the animal 
has disappeared. Do not kill moles. They are insect eaters. Mice, 
ground squirrels and rabbits are root eaters. The mole goes through 
the earth and around roots, eating slugs and beetles. 

In the story of “Big Brother Bear,” and in the main part of 
this book you can read about the raccoon, or little tree-bear. And 
in “Kangaroo and ’Possum, Too,” you can read about the opossum 
who has a fur pocket on her stomach to carry her babies in. These 
animals are found only in the South, as the prairie dog is found in 
the West. Every part of our country has some special small, wild 
animal—mink, weasel, badger, fox, skunk—whose haunts and habits 
are interesting. There is just one more that is found all over the 
United States, wherever there are creeks, ponds and swamps. This 
is the muskrat. 

You can scarcely go skating on a frozen pond in the winter 
without finding a dome-shaped, mud and grass house, or a little 


282 


WILD ANIMALS NEAR HOME 


village of a dozen homes frozen in the ice and covered with snow. 
Mr. Sharp, a nature writer, says that you can skate all around them 
and sit on one to strap your skates, without bothering the furry 
bunch of sleepers inside. But push a stick carefully through the 
thick wall and you can hear a soft skurrying inside, then a “ plunk, 
plunk, plunk!” as one after the other plunges into the water, through 
a doorway below the ice. 

The muskrat doesn’t mind. You couldn’t wet his sleek, brown 
fur coat any more than you could wet a duck’s feathers. He only 
sleeps in the daytime, in winter. Each stout dome has a single room. 
It is a sort of club house, or European hotel, where a number sleep 
in one bed, snuggled up to keep each other warm. At night they 
all tumble out into the icy water and hunt for food. They dive for 
fresh water mussels, and bite off tender white calamus blades. You 
know how good calamus it. They bring their food up through a 
hole and wash it, just as the ’coons or washing-bears do. After this 
feast of a sort of oysters on the half-shell and celery, they often go 
up into orchards for frozen apples—fruit ice. A dainty feeder is 
the muskrat. 

The muskrat builds his house only for a winter sleeping place. 
In the summer he burrows in the bank or builds under bushes on 
the swamp. Mr. Burroughs says he is a fine weather prophet. If 
he begins to build by October—and he works only at night—you 
may be sure there is to be a cold winter. Or, if he builds very high 
and strong, his house solidly plastered to logs, stumps or tussocks 
of grass, look out for high water. 

A dark lantern, with which you can throw a light over a pond, 
will give you glimpses of muskrat families feeding. Only a foot 
long, their fur is so thick, rich and glossy a brown that it is sold as 
river mink. Muskrats sit up to eat, something like squirrels, or 
rather like kangaroos, using their six-inch, flat, scaly tails for third 
legs. They use those tails for rudders in swimming, too, and with 
them they slap the water to warn others of danger. Perhaps, w T ho 
knows, they use them as beavers use their tails, for trowels in plaster¬ 
ing their houses with mud. For his size the muskrat is just as bright 
and clever as his big cousin, the beaver. 

Even where they are too quick, and you fail to see them, you 
can tell where muskrats have been by a faint musky odor, as of a 
flower perfume on the frosty, moonlit air of a lonely marsh. 


TYPICAL INDUSTRIES 


Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher 

And children coming home from school 
Look in at the open door; 

They love to see the flaming forge, 

And hear the bellows roar. 

In writing that verse into The Village Blacksmith, Longfellow expressed 
a profound truth. Children have a natural interest in the work of the 
grown-up world. They love to watch the blacksmith, the carpenter, the 
mason, the miller, the shoemaker. Boys, too young to work, follow the 
threshing machine from farm to farm. Village boys hang about the rail¬ 
way station to watch the locomotive and the grain elevator. They want 
to know how things are made, and what makes the wheels go ’round. 

The experience of industry a boy can get in this way is considerable. 
Unfortunately, the workman doesn’t want a boy around. He is in the 
way; often he is in danger. In any case, the industries near him are 
limited in kind, number and function. A flour mill is only one step in 
a long series of connected processes that produce the world’s bread. Under¬ 
standing of how any one man’s work is bound to all the other work of 
the world, broadens the mind of the child wonderfully, and teaches him 
respect for every sort of labor. 

To supply the lack of real objects of study, the following sketches 
were written. Children are nearest, in experience and interests, to prim¬ 
itive peoples. It is a curious thing that the very earliest occupations of 
supplying food, clothing, shelter and tools are still the fundamental 
industries, and must always remain so. Moreover, they are the most 
highly developed, and employ the large majority of workers everywhere. 
These facts have governed our choice of wheat and rice, iron, cotton, 
wood-working, pottery and glass-making as typical industries. The 
making of watches was added to satisfy the child’s natural curiosity about 
machinery; and matches to set him thinking of the wonders of cheap, 
everyday necessities. We have connected all these varied industries 
with the school studies of geography, history, mathematics, drawing, 
chemistry, physics and astronomy, showing their practical use. A voyage 
into the World-at-Work opens a new and fascinating wonderland to the 
children. 


us:j 





WHEAT 


I. BIG BUSINESSES FROM LITTLE SEEDS 

What did you have for breakfast? 

Bread and butter, toast, muffins, batter cakes. You had other 
things, too, but all of you had some kind of bread made of wheat flour. 
For dinner you will have crackers with your soup, and perhaps pie 
or cake. Those will be made of wheat flour, too. We use more wheat 
in America than any other kind of food. Everyone who lives here 
eats a barrel of flour every year. That is about ninety million barrels. 
It takes nearly five bushels of wheat to make a barrel of white flour. 
Four hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat! Yes, indeed! But 
we really grow about seven hundred million bushels. We have a 
great deal of wheat and flour to sell to countries across the ocean, 
where they cannot grow enough to feed all the people. Wheat is 
the bread of all white people. They use corn and rye and oats, too, 
buc more wheat than all the others put together. The Chinese and 
Japanese and Filipinos and many other peoples eat more rice. But 
they are beginning to buy our white flour, too. 

Where does all this wheat come from? Just farms. Little farms 
and big farms, in a great many of our states, grow wheat. These 
wheat fields cover fifty million acres of our land. Some wheat fields 
are so big that a hundred men go into them at once. They ride on 
sulky plows drawn by horses, or they use steam plows. Then they 
go over the fields again with steel-toothed harrows to break up the 
clods. They follow the harrows with drill seeders that drop the 
seed through pipes in rows. Behind each pipe is a little plow like a 
garden trowel, that covers the seed. In some parts of our country 
wheat is planted in the spring. In others, where winter is less severe, 
it is planted in the fall. 

Did you ever get your name in a newspaper? You were proud 
to see your name in print. Our president gets his name in the paper 
very often. But no one, not even kings and queens, gets a column 
or so every day in all the big city papers in many countries and in 
many languages. Wheat does. Wheat is the bread of many people. 

284 


STORY OF WHEAT 



Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 


THE OLD WAY. 


Plowing with oxen and a wooden plow. This is a recent photograph, showing that in Egypt they 

still plow just as they did thousands of years ago. 



Copyright 1909 by Underwood & Underwood 


THE NEW WAY. 


A modern gang plow drawn by a traction engine and turning eight furrows at a time. 













Copyright by Brown Bros. 

When the wheat is marketed it is stored in immense elevators, some of them holding two or three million 
bushels. The elevators are provided with long spouts which can be lowered into the hold of a vessel, where 
buckets carried on a link chain catch up the grain and carry it up into the elevator. A cargo of 200,000 
bushels can thus be unloaded in two hours. Spouts on the other side of the elevator can reload the wheat 
into cars if desired, filling a car in from five to ten minutes. 



Copyright by Brown Bros, 


Often next to an elevator is a great flouring mill. The wheat in the elevator first passes through a ware¬ 
house separator which frees the wheat from any impurities, such as stones, straw, grains of corn, oats or 
barley. The wheat is. then weighed by automatic scales here shown, which weigh a given quantity of wheat 
at a time. The weighing of each quantity requires about one minute. The scales register the number of 
bushels. From the scales the wheat passes to the bins. 

































Copyright by Brown Bros. 

Wheat after it is drawn from the bins, is conducted through the scouring machine represented in this 
picture. Here it is thoroughly cleaned from such impurities as may stick to the kernels of wheat. When 
thus thoroughly cleaned and polished, the wheat is steamed and sent through the grinding rolls. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 

These striking looking machines are called dust collectors. The dust from the wheat and also the fine 
flour dust which accumulates are drawn off by a process of suction pipes which convey the dust to these 
machines. From them it is sucked away to the refuse cans. 














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Copyright by Brown Bros. 

From the bolters the flour passes through a purifier. This machine is one of the most important of 
modern improvements in making flour. The flour is fed on a sieve set at a slight angle. A current of air 
is drawn upward through this sieve, blowing the stock upwards. This allows the heavier and better material 
to remain below, while the lighter and impure particles are separated and carried away. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. , , . 

From the purifier the stock goes to the smooth rollers where it is pressed into flour. From the smooth 
rolls it passes to the dresser, a centrifugal machine which consists of a cylinder with an internal shaft, on 
which are keyed iron beaters which fling the material against the silk clothing of the cylinder. This is the 
final stage through which the flour is carried, and from here the finished oroduct is conducted to the pack¬ 
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BIG BUSINESSES FROM LITTLE SEEDS 


285 


They are all anxious to know if bread is going to be cheap or dear. 
How much wheat is being planted? the world asks. But that doesn’t 
answer the question about bread, for many things may happen to 
wheat after it is in the ground. 

How is the soil everywhere wheat grows? Is there enough rain? 
Or too much? Owners of railroads and ships are interested in the 
size of the next wheat crop, for they will have to carry the grain 
and flour across land and water. Owners of flour mills want to know 
how much they will have to grind, and what they will have to pay 
for it. Men who buy and sell wheat, owners of grain elevators who 
store wheat, bakers of bread and makers of breakfast foods and 
macaroni are interested, too. Village storekeepers are anxious to 
know if the farmers will have little money or a great deal to spend. 
Factories want to know how much goods to make, railroads how 
many grain cars they will need. Every farmer who grows wheat 
wants to know what other farmers are doing, and what his wheat 
will be worth. Wheat is so important that our government makes 
a crop report once a month. Corn and oats and other foods are put 
in, too, but wheat comes first. 

From the fuss that is made about it, you would think the farmers 
were tucking precious babies into cradles when they put the little 
brown wheat seeds into the ground. Well, they are. The world 
wants to know every day how those seed babies are getting along. 
Wheat has as many troubles as human babies. In dry summers 
little chinch bugs feed on them. In cool, moist summers the tiny 
Hessian fly, only one-sixth of an inch long, lays eggs that hatch 
into little worms on them. Then there is the mildew and rust. In 
the spring, wheat needs rain or melting snow. At harvest time warm 
sunshine to dry the ripe grain. 

Harvest time is exciting. Where do you think the excitement 
begins? Not in the wheat field where the grain is turning from green 
to gold, but in big city banks that may be a thousand miles away. 
The farmers must have a lot of money to pay men and machines 
to save the wheat. They go to the banks in the small towns where 
they trade, to borrow money. In a few weeks, when the wheat is 
sold, they can pay the money back. The little banks have to borrow 
money of the big city banks. 

Come and see a big wheat farm in harvest time. It is a golden 
fleece as far as you can see. First come the reapers to shear the 
fleece. In the old days, and in many backward countries today, 


286 


BIG BUSINESSES FROM LITTLE SEEDS 


men cut wheat with scythes by hand. An American fastened a number 
of scythes or blades to a shaft and made a reaping machine that could 
cut as much wheat as many men. (See McCormick, page 1133.) The 
reaper not only cuts the wheat but gathers it in bundles with the 
heads all one way, and ties the bundles. It is really a reaper and 
binder. Men gather the bundles behind the reaper and stack them 
in shocks for the sun to dry the grain. 

A few weeks later a big red threshing machine goes from farm 
to farm. It is run by steam, like a fire engine, and it makes the same 
chug-chugging noise. It stands in the middle of the field. One 
man runs the engine. Others bring the bundles, feed them to the 
thresher. The heads are torn off, and the straw showered out behind. 
The grains are shelled from the husk, the chaff blown out in a golden 
rain, and the wheat grains dropped below. In one day a big thresher 
can clean two thousand bushels of wheat. It takes a great many 
men to feed its clattering iron jaws, to pitch the straw back so the 
thresher will not be buried, and to catch the grain in bags or 
wagon beds. And you ought to see the harvesters eat! Farmer’s 
wives and daughters have to work a week to get food enough 
for one day. A combined reaping and threshing machine is now 
made which cuts the wheat, threshes it and delivers the cleaned 
grain in sacks. 

Then what happens? The wheat cannot lie on the ground, 
and no farmer can afford to have a great storage house that he would 
use only a few weeks. His nearest town on a railroad has one for 
all the farmers who trade in that town. This storage house is called 
a grain elevator. It stands beside the railway. It looks like a very 
tall barn with only a few windows near the top. Often it is covered 
with sheet iron so it will not easily catch fire. Some elevators are 
tall, round towers of steel and cement. They are built in groups, 
and roofed with iron. 

In every town in a wheat-growing country there is an elevator 
and a grain buyer. How is the wheat taken from the low wagon 
bed and put into the high elevator? Did you ever see a link belt? 
It is an iron chain made of broad links. On each link is a little square 
steel bucket that holds about a pint. The belt runs over a sprocket 
wheel at the top of the elevator. The .little buckets dip into the 
wagon. Each one carries a tiny load of wheat up. In a few minutes 
the wheat is all lifted into a weighing bin at the top. When a load 
is weighed the wheat is dropped into the elevator tower. 


BIG BUSINESSES FROM LITTLE SEEDS 


287 


The grain buyer pays the farmer for the wheat, and the farmer 
pays the bank the money he borrowed and has a good deal left over. 
The grain buyer has to borrow money now, for he must buy the wheat 
as fast as it is brought in. He can pay his loan when he sells the 
wheat in big city markets, or to millers. He makes a few cents on 
every bushel, and the railroad makes something for hauling it. The 
banks make a little interest for loaning the money. The farmer 
begins to buy all sorts of things—clothes and food and furniture, 
and more farm machines. By and by all the wheat money is flowing 
into all kinds of businesses. 

As the country elevators fill with wheat the grain buyers call 
on the railroads for cars to carry it away. The cars back up on the 
side track below the elevator. A long canvas pipe, as squirmy as an 
elephant’s trunk, pokes its nose into a car and the wheat flows through 
it in a golden stream until a car is full. More than a thousand bushels 
of wheat can be put into a freight car, so it can be hauled a thousand 
miles for a cent or two a bushel. The wheat takes a journey. It 
may be stored again in a big city elevator, or it may be poured into 
the dark hold of a ship and sent across the ocean, or it may go to a 
mill to be ground into flour. 

Flour mills are tall, too, but not so tall as elevators. A hundred 
years or so ago, mills were never more than two stories high. Wheat 
had to be carried up to the hopper for grinding, and carried to sieves 
many times. Boys who were learning to be millers had to have 
strong backs. An American miller thought it was foolish to carry 
grain and flour about on people’s backs. His name was Oliver Evans. 
He tied a bag of grain to a rope and pulled it upstairs over a pulley 
wheel under the roof. Then he thought of tying little buckets on a 
belt and pulling them up just fast enough to feed the hopper. But 
after that the flour had to be pulled up again and again for the grind¬ 
ings and siftings. At last he thought that if a mill had as many floors 
as there were steps in milling, the grain could be lifted to the top, 
fall from floor to floor, and come out finished flour at the bottom. 

Wasn’t that clever? Work and time and money are all saved 
by building mills high. You see the link-belt is used in grain elevators, 
too. Americans are the cleverest people in the world for making 
machines do their work. Wheat is moved by machinery from the 
seed to the loaf of bread. Milling machinery is very wonderful. The 
grains are crushed between steel rollers. Other machines sift out 
the brown skin of the wheat seeds, and take out the little germ that 


288 


BIG BUSINESSES FROM LITTLE SEEDS 


would grow into a new plant. Machines mix the starch cells in the 
middle of the grain with the gluten cells around them. At the very 
last the flour is sifted through a silk gauze called bolting cloth. At 
the top of a mill the dusty brown grains pour into a big hopper. 
At the bottom soft, velvety white flour runs into new barrels and 
white muslin bags. It is ready to be made into bread. Every part 
that has been taken out is turned into something useful to feed animals. 

The bread you ate this morning was from wheat planted six 
months, or a year or more ago. And while you were eating it, farmers 
by thousands were in the fields putting in seed for next year’s bread. 
Look in the morning paper and see how much it has to say about 
wheat. It will be on an inside page. There will be a lot of it in fine 
print. And there will be just as much tomorrow, and next year. 
The story of wheat is a continued story that is told over and over 
again, every year. But it is never quite the same story. People 
are always guessing how it is going to come out at the end of the year. 
If you ever go to Chicago you must visit the Board of Trade, where 
wheat and other grains are bought and sold every day by men who 
guess differently. The men who guess the nearest right, make money 
by buying and selling wheat. 


/ 





COTTON. (Gossypium) 

Native plant from which staple varieties have been derived 




COTTON 


II. THE WONDERFUL GIFT OF GOOD KING COTTON 

Did you ever sing “Dixie Land?” “Dixie” is a loving nick¬ 
name for our warm southern states, where cotton grows over hundreds 
of miles of country. The white men who own the cotton fields love 
their homes, and the cotton plant, and the song. So do the negroes 
who work in the sunny fields. The song begins: “ Away down South 
in the land of cotton.” It is sung to a gay American tune that makes 
your feet feel like dancing. But you will never know what a happy 
song it is unless you hear it sung by moonlight in a camp of negro 
cotton pickers, to the playing of banjos. 

A hundred years ago so much cotton was grown in our Southern 
states, and it was worth so much money that it was called King 
Cotton, ruler of the cloth market. Cotton is still King, for there 
is more cotton clothing used than all the wool and silk and linen put 
together. Our Southern states grow three-fourths of all the cotton 
in the world. So you see it is “Dixie Land” cotton that is King. 

When you think of a king you think of something big and strong, 
like the oak tree that is king of the forest, or the lion, king of the 
jungle, don’t you? The cotton plant is more like a queen. It is a 
proud, dainty little bush, very clean and bright, and about four 
feet high. It is as par-tic-u-lar about the ground under its feet as 
Queen Elizabeth. You know the story about Sir Walter Raleigh, 
who spread his velvet cloak on the mud for the great Queen to walk 
on? Cotton wants soft, warm soil as fine and rich as velvet to grow 
in, and it will not have common weeds about it. It wants to stand 
all alone, and have two or three feet of room to spread its green 
satin skirts. It has a leaf like a three-lobed maple, and a blossom 
much like a pink holly-hock. 

Like a real queen the cotton blossom has several gowns to wear. 
For its coming out party it has a snow white silk petticoat. The 
newspapers always mention it, saying: “Cotton is in blossom and 
looks well.” Like wheat, cotton is always getting its name in the 
papers. It soon gets tired of its coming-out gown and changes it 
for one of shell pink, then for a rose pink. The blossom does not 

289 


290 


THE WONDERFUL GIFT OF GOOD KING COTTON 


fade as other flowers do. At last it turns red. Where the flowers 
were, are bunches of green balls in husks like hazel nuts. These 
are called cotton bolls. 

For six or eight weeks the cotton bolls swell until they are as 
big as eggs. The husk turns brown and cracks along five seams. 
Then it bursts wide, and out pops a fluffy snow ball. The cotton 
does not ripen all at once like wheat, and sometimes you may see 
pink and white blossoms, green pods and big snowy bolls all in one 
field. There is no prettier growing crop in the world than a field 
of cotton. The picking season lasts from July to Thanksgiving, and 
a field must be gone over and over. 

This leis-ure-ly work in the warm, bright autumn days of the 
South just suits the sun-loving, happy-hearted negroes. As soon as 
the first bolls burst open, the negroes swarm out into the fields by 
thousands to pick cotton. The work lasts three or four months and 
they make a kind of picnic of it. They move from one plantation 
to another and live in camps. At night they dance and sing and 
play the banjo. 

A ripe cotton boll when pulled from its brown husk, looks and 
feels like a soft mass of snowy lint. But if you squeeze it you can 
feel little hard lumps inside. Pull the fuzzy hairs apart. Every one 
of them grows tight to a dark brown seed about as big as an orange 
pit. The boll has as many seeds as an orange. The fibres are all 
fastened to the seeds, and they twist and cling and mat like felt about 
them. It w r ould take you several minutes to pull the seeds from one 
boll, and a day to save a pound of cotton lint. 

A hundred years or more ago, all the cotton seeds had to be 
pulled from the lint by human fingers. That made cotton cost a 
great deal, even when the work was done by slaves. Then an Amer¬ 
ican invented a machine with rows and rows of little steel fingers. 
The fingers were set on a sort of rolling pin turned with a crank like 
a clothes wringer. This machine is the cotton gin (see Eli Whitney). 
The cotton gin of today is a big machine worked by steam. It can 
clean more cotton in a day than hundreds of men. 

The pickers in the field carry big brown bags that will hold 
many pounds of bolls. When a bag is full it is emptied in a wagon 
bed. When the wagon is full a man drives away with it to a cotton¬ 
ginning factory. (This is generally at a railway station beside the 
track.) The cotton is weighed and dumped into a big hopper out¬ 
side the factory. Before you can wink twice, the whole wagon load 


THE WONDERFUL GIFT OF GOOD KING COTTON 


291 


is sucked down a big pipe and disappears inside the mill; just as if 
a giant had swallowed it. 

Hurry inside and see what happens! What a dreadful noise, 
like that chugging, clattering threshing machine in the wheat field. 
The air is full of whirling wheels and flying belts, and a snow storm 
of cotton flakes. Everything is covered with the fleecy stuff. You 
are white in a minute. Cotton lint lies in big, soft drifts. It has 
been torn from the seeds by the rows and rows of little steel fingers 
on the ginning rolls that turn over and over. Brushes sweep the 
cotton from the teeth. The seeds have been dropped into tanks below. 

The seeds used to be thrown away, or burned in the furnace of 
the ginning factory. They made such a hot fire that it was found 
they were as full of oil as nuts. It is a vegetable oil like that in pea¬ 
nuts, too, with a pleasant taste. So now cotton seeds are crushed. 
The oil is good for making fine toilet soaps. If refined it can be used 
for salad oil on the table, and for cooking, and to combine with beef 
and other fats to make patent butters. The seed-meal, pressed into 
cakes, is good food for cattle. Cotton seed was rather costly fuel, 
wasn’t it? 

When cotton lint is torn from the seeds it is as soft and light 
as swan’s down. For its weight it takes up too much room, and it 
flies away in the least breeze like thistle seed. So it is carried under 
steam presses that crowd and squeeze it into bales. Five hundred 
pounds of it are pressed into a bale four feet square and five feet 
high. Each bale is wrapped in brown bagging and bound with iron 
hoops. A great deal of baled cotton can be carried in a car. Big 
river steamboats carry the bales on open decks. 

Now it is King Cotton. It is going on a journey, and it will 
rule the cloth market. Some of it will go to mills in the cotton 
country; more will go to larger, older mills in the northern states. 
But a great deal of it takes a long ocean journey to England, France 
or Germany. Some of the Dixie Land cotton goes to Japan and 
China. 

Away over in England where no cotton grows, but where there 
are hundreds of cloth mills, lace works, thread mills and stocking¬ 
knitting machines, they w’atch for King Cotton’s fleet of ships from 
America. In the seaport city of Liverpool, England, there is a cotton 
exchange for buying and selling cotton lint. It is like the Chicago 
board of trade, where wheat and other grains are bought and sold. 
The cotton is bought by sample. Little bundles of lint are carried 


292 


THE WONDERFUL GIFT OF GOOD KING COTTON 


around by boy messengers. There is great excitement when a ship 
load of very fine cotton comes in. 

Perhaps you think all cotton is alike. It isn’t. There are as 
many kinds of cotton as there are of apples. Most of the little cotton 
hairs are less than an inch long, but we have one kind that is two 
inches long, and very fine and silky. It grows on tall bushes along 
sea-coasts and on islands, so it is called sea-island cotton. It is so 
costly, and there is so little of it, that it is used only for thread and 
lace and the finest lawns and swiss muslins. Some cotton is very 
white, some a creamy yellow. In Egypt there is a brown cotton that 
is the best in the world for stockings and knitted underwear. Cotton 
traders can tell in a minute what a little sample of lint is best for. 
They buy the kinds their mills need. 

A ship load of cotton goes up a wide river from Liverpool, and 
through a canal, and is unloaded beside the mill that bought the 
cargo. In the mill the bales are opened, the crowded lint loosened, 
beaten to a swan’s down fluff again, and fanned free of dust. One 
bale fills a big room, it is so light and soft. The tiny hairs lie twisted 
and tangled together. They have to be combed, and made to lie 
all one way, just like your hair. Think of it. They are only as long 
as the first joint of your little finger, and as fine as spider webs. Yet 
they have to be combed and made to lie all one way. 

The fluff goes through roller combs set with little steel teeth 
like sewing needles. One row is laid straight, then another behind 
it, and another until a sheet is formed. The little hairs lie end to 
end, overlapping and clinging to each other. The fluff sheet is parted 
into narrow strips that pass through grooves in big steel rolls. Each 
strip is rolled over and over into a soft hollow rope as big as your 
papa’s thumb. This passes through smaller and smaller grooves. 
It is squeezed and twisted and rolled, in one machine after another, 
until it is a cord as big as twine, but still very soft. Another cord 
just like it is twisted with it to a fine yarn. All this rolling and twist¬ 
ing is called spinning. It makes a yarn ready for weaving. If you 
want to know how small this yarn is, ravel a piece of muslin and look 
at just one thread. That is cotton yarn. It would take six such 
strands of yarn twisted together, to make fine sewing thread. 

The spun yarn is wound on big bobbins or spools for weaving. 
Cloth is woven as you wove paper and splint mats in the kinder¬ 
garten. The threads run up and down and across, over and under. 
In a weaving machine the ends of the lengthwise threads are fastened 



LEAVES, FLOWER AND BOLL OF KERCHI COTTON (Natural Size) FROM UNITED 
STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 





A COTTON-PICKING MACHINE 

which does the work of thirty “hands.” Revolving cylinders carry steel fingers which pick the 
cotton fiber, and leave the unripe bolls and the plant unharmed. 













PICKING COTTON BY HAND. 



COTTON ARRIVING AT MARKET. 












A COTTON GIN WHICH SEPARATES THE SEED FROM THE COTTON. 



INTERIOR OF WEAVING ROOM IN LARGE COTTON MILL. 












THE WONDERFUL GIFT OF GOOD KING COTTON 


293 


to a roller. The roll is a yard long, and the threads are so close 
together that, altogether, they look like thin cloth. Every other 
thread is lifted, and all at once. The odd threads are lowered. A 
shuttle carries the cross thread between them. Then the upper 
threads go down and the lower ones up, and the shuttle flies back. 
In this way miles and miles of cotton cloth are woven by great looms 
worked by steam power. 

How much work has been done since the little cotton seeds 
were planted. And yet good cotton cloth is sold for a few cents a 
yard. A great deal of it is dyed, too, or it is printed in pretty 
patterns. Sometimes, as in dress ginghams, the yarn is dyed many 
colors before it is woven. Some looms weave satin like stripes and 
dots and flowers on the cloth. Knitting machines make stockings 
and even gloves, without seams. Linen and silk and wool are spun 
and woven in much the same way, but these are not so cheap as 
cotton. It is good King Cotton that gives you most of your clothes. 


IRON 


III. THE LITTLE PIG THAT GOES TO MARKET 

Oh! The baby’s little big toe! No, that is just a play to amuse 
the baby. This is a real pig. Then, it’s “the squealy little fellow 
that pays the rent” of the Irish farmer. No, again. That pig is 
not sold until he is big and fat or he wouldn’t bring much money. 
Another guess—pig iron. 

Pig iron! Who ever heard of such a thing? Your papa has, 
for one. Ask him. Pig iron gets its name in the papers every day, 
just as wheat and cotton does. Turn any daily paper over to an 
inside page of fine print headed “The Markets.” There you will 
find the prices of things people have to have, and that are bought 
and sold every day. Wheat and other grains and flour fill two 
columns; live stock or cattle, sheep and hogs one column; produce, 
such as butter and eggs, one column; cotton half a column; metals: 
ah, here it is—copper, tin, lead, iron. It says: “ The Iron Age will 
say tomorrow: Pig iron is rising in price. The iron ore fleet of ships 
is all on the lakes. Rolling mills are working day and night shifts. 
Great activity in all lines of iron manufacturing.” 

What is pig iron? What does it look like? Where is it found? 
It isn’t found. It is made of iron ore, as flour is made of wheat, 
although in quite a different way. And it looks something like a 
round, gray stick of stove wood. The story of iron—how it is mined 
and turned into a pig, how it goes to market and what happens to 
it afterwards, is long and thrilling. 

There is iron in every country in the world. It is all through 
the earth, the soil, the water and the rocks, and in plants and animals. 
Some spring water tastes of iron, and is colored brown by it. When 
iron rusts it turns red. So soil that holds a good deal of iron dust 
is red, or red brown. Red tile and brick clays are full of iron, and 
there is iron in your red blood. Doctors give you iron tonics when 
your blood is too pale. And they tell you to eat spinach and other 
very green vegetables, because they have iron in them. 

Iron is never found in lumps so a blacksmith could dig a piece 
out of the ground and hammer it into a nail. But in the rock layers 

294 


THE LITTLE PIG THAT GOES TO MARKET 


295 


of many mountains there is so much iron that it pays to melt it out. 
Such rocks are called iron ores. Iron is so useful that men have 
been melting it out of the ores for thousands of years. It takes such 
a terribly hot fire to melt iron stone that every ancient people made 
a wonder story out of how it was first done. The Greeks, who thought 
different gods did all the hard and mysterious things, had a god of 
fire called Vulcan. He was supposed to live in a burning mountain 
where he melted the useful metals, and hammered them into shapes 
on his forge. That is why we call burning mountains volcanoes today. 

If those old Greeks could see the blast furnaces, or volcano 
towers of fire, and the rolling mills and casting foundries of today, 
where thousands of tons of iron are melted, rolled, cast, drawn and 
hammered into shapes, they would open their eyes. The world has 
learned how to do everything in mining ores, carrying them, melting 
and working iron, so that iron is now one of the commonest things 
in use. There isn’t any kind of work that men do, from hoeing a 
garden to pulling a train of cars in which iron is not used. 

There are iron mines in a great many of our states. The biggest 
ones that are now worked are near the shore of Lake Superior. The 
ore is found deep in the heart of some low mountain ranges that lie 
from twenty to one hundred miles back, and a thousand or more 
feet above the wattr. These mines are very interesting. You have 
to walk, or ride in a little steel ore car down a sloping tunnel that 
bores a thousand feet into the mountain. The tunnel is lit by electric 
lights so it is as bright as the New York subway tunnel. This tunnel 
into a mine is called the shaft. At the end of it other tunnels run out 
in every direction. At their ends big rooms have been cut out of 
the solid rock. 

The heart of the mountain is honeycombed with these halls and 
chambers. There sooty-faced miners work by electric light, electric 
fans whirl fresh air down the shaft, and steam pumps force out the 
water of the underground springs that would flood the workings. 
Miners used to tear down the rock with picks and hand drills, but that 
is too slow work. Today they use compressed air drills that bore like 
gigantic woodpeckers. In the deep round holes they put dynamite 
candles. Far away, so it will take five minutes to burn, they light 
fuses, as you light the tails of fire crackers. Then they run. In a 
few minutes, bang! goes the dynamite, bringing down tons of rock. 

An iron mine is like the Fourth of July all the time. Boom! 
Crash! Any minute there may be a terrific explosion that shakes 


296 


THE LITTLE PIG THAT GOES TO MARKET 


the mountain, and great falls of rock like falling cities. You would 
be sure to scream with fright the first time you heard it. By and by, 
when the dust from an explosion has settled, the miners go back and 
find tons of broken up iron ore all ready to load into the ore cars. 
These are pulled up the shaft by cables, and sent down the railway track 
from twenty to a hundred miles to the lake. It is down hill all the 
way, a drop of ten to a hundred feet to the mile, so the little ore 
cars don’t need an engine. They just roll along by themselves. The 
track runs out on a high bridge-like pier for half a mile, and over 
deep water. There men help the cars dump their loads into ore bins. 

Ore ships steam right under these bins. The bottoms of the 
bins drop on hinges like doors, and the ore tumbles into the holds 
of the ships. The ships steam away over hundreds of miles of the 
great lakes and carry the ore to Chicago or to Cleveland, Ohio. From 
Cleveland most of the ore is sent by rail to Pittsburg, the greatest 
iron manufacturing city in the world. 

To melt iron ores, coal and limestone are needed. The three 
things are not found together. The limestone and coal are around 
the lower lakes, and these are nearer the railroads and big markets 
for iron. The ores on the upper lake can be shipped cheaply. You 
see the cars run by their own weight to deep water, and vessels can 
carry things for less money than trains. So it costs very little to 
send ore from those mines to where there is coal and limestone. 

The furnaces where iron is melted out of the ores, are tall towers 
of iron plates bolted together and lined thick with fire clays that will 
not melt. The furnaces are often as tall as a six or eight story 
building. They stand together in a group, each one plumed with 
black smoke and at night with smoky flames. A stranger coming 
into Chicago or Pittsburg by night, might think these cities had 
volcanoes from the glow of fire in the sky above the furnaces. 

The inside of a blast furnace is the shape of a gigantic bottle 
turned upside down. An elevated railroad runs from the dumps of 
ore, coke and limestone in the vast yards to the tops of these furnaces, 
and from one to another. On a railed balcony at the top of each 
are men who see that the furnaces are properly filled. A car load of 
coke is dumped in, then limestone, then ore, making sandwiches of 
them. More material is put in, in the same order and amounts, until 
the furnace is filled. A fire is kindled at the bottom, below the small 
neck of the bottle. Soon the coke is on fire, a blast of warm dry 
air is forced through the furnace, and everything inside melts together 


STEEL MANUFACTURE 



Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 


THE ORE—This picture shows a pile of iron ore at a mine in the Mesaba country in Northeastern Minnesota. 
This region is noted as containing the greatest iron-ore deposit thus far discovered in the world, and also 
because the ore is near the surface and easily mined. There are several hundred thousand tons of ore in that 
pile awaiting shipment. Appliances for loading are so perfect that the train of forty cars which you see 
standing there can be loaded in a few hours. 



Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 

TRANSPORTATION TO THE MILLS—Then comes a run at high speed to the head of Lake Superior, 
only sixty-five miles away ending at the world-famous ore docks. Here a pull of a lever opens the hopper 
gates of each car and the whole train can be unloaded in two minutes. The ore is run through the ‘ “pockets” 
of the ore dock into the hold of a great ore steamship, five thousand tons of ore being loaded in thirty minutes. 
The vessel carries the ore to the ore docks of the great steel mills lo which it is consigned. The picture shows 
a great steel steamer as long as a city block unloading at the docks of the Inland Co., at Indiana Harbor, 
near Chicago. Here by machinery ‘‘grab buckets” are lowered into the hold of the ship; instantly each 
bucket grabs about seven tons of ore and is whirled upward to the bridge above. Thus ten thousand tons of 
ore are unloaded at this dock in a single day. 









































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TAPPING THE BLAST FURNACE—In this picture we see the lower part of the great blast furnace. 
The white hot liquid iron sinks to the bottom and, freed from the slag, it is tapped and flows out, as you see 
in the picture, and is carried into huge brick-lined ladles. Each ladle holds twenty-five tons. Each ladle 
sits on its own little car and the whole train load is filled at one heat. This train is run direct either to the 
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Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 

THE PIG IRON CASTING MACHINE—By the old way of making pig iron, it was run out of the furnace 
mouth into a series of long canals in a sand bed and from these canals into little laterals, where it cooled in 
“pigs.” This method is now displaced by the pig-casting machine. It is a long endless belt with steel 
buckets on it, each bucket being a mold for a ioo-pound pig of iron. As we see in the picture, the ladle car 
is brought to the casting house, the ladle dumped by electricity, and the molten iron runs through a trough 
into a moving bucket conveyor. As the buckets move upon a 200-foot incline the molds are drenched in 
a flood ot cold water. At the upper end the pigs are dropped into a car which is flooded with water, to keep 
it from catching on fire. Pig iron thus cooled is dumped onto a stock pile to be carried to the open hearth 
furnace when needed. 



Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 


THE POURING SIDE OF OPEN HEARTH FURNACES—Instead of making into pigs as above 
described, the molten iron is generally carried in the ladles, direct to the Open Hearth Furnaces. On one 
side of the row of furnaces is the charging floor. A huge overhead charging machine travels the length of it. 
A quantity of limestone is spread on the floor of the furnace, then come the ladles carrying the seething mass 
of red hot iron from the blast furnace The lower door of the furnace is closed and this molten mass is 
poured in through an upper door provided for the purpose. In this furiously hot furnace, which reaches 
4000 degrees of heat, the iron ore is freed from its carbon, phosphorus and sulphur. Then, since steel must 
have carbon in it, just the right amount of carbon is added to the melt. 












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Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 


THE BLOOMING-MILL—The blooming-mill is a big, noisy machine for changing the ingots into shapes 
required In the center are huge steel rolls revolving towards each other. Leading to this is a long train 
of smaller rollers driven at a rapid rate. The instant an ingot is laid on the far end of the table, it is carried 
to the jaws of the grooved rolls. When it strikes them there is a crash like a cannon shot and the ingot is 
forced through the rolls and comes out thinner and longer than before. Back again it goes through a smaller 
groove in the same rolls. Thus it passes back and forth, each time through a smaller groove until it is reduced 
to a long, flat slab. 



Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 

SHEET STEEL—If sheet steel ; t to be made, the slabs pass to the table of the sheet bar mill. The same 
operation as in the blooming-mill is here repeated, though on a smaller scale and the resulting sheet bar is 
a long snake-like strip of steel. This red hot sheet bar travels onward to the saw which cuts it into 30-feet, 
lengths. 





































Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 


FIRST ROLLING OUT OF THE SHEET—The sheet-bars are loaded into heating furnaces to be brought 
up to required heat for rolling. When ready the roller catches the sheet in his tongs and thrusts it between 
the rolls of his mill. Another worker catches it with tongs and passes it back, and thus it is shot back and 
forth until it is squeezed into a thin long sheet. 



Courtesy of Inland Steel Co. 


ROLLING MILL—Here we have a general view of the rolling mill, showing machines for rolling steel into 
all the many forms required. 
























THE LITTLE PIG THAT GOES TO MARKET 


297 


in a white heat, just as the sugar, milk and butter melt together and 
boil when you make candy 

When a furnace is ready to be drawn a hole at the bottom is 
opened. Out pours a bubbling, copper-colored river of fire, into a 
deep ditch of dry sand. Of all the things that were put into the 
furnace the iron is the heaviest, so the liquid iron falls lowest in the 
stream, letting the melted rock and ashes rise to the top. Twenty 
feet or more from the furnace the ditch is dammed. A hole at the 
base of the dam lets the iron through into a smaller sand canal. The 
lighter slag flows away on top into slag cars and is carried to dumps. 

The iron runs in a golden stream to a great bed of sand under 
a shed roof. The bed is pitted with holes a couple of feet long and 
as deep as a man’s arm is thick. These pits, or pockets in the sand, 
are in regular rows. The iron runs down channels into the pockets. 
Soon the whole bed is a glowing garden. The pools turn to a sulphur 
yellow, then to gray and silver as they cool. When they are cold 
they are clubs of iron. They are raked from the sand and stacked 
in the yards like cord wood. Those clubs are iron “pigs,” or pig 
iron, and are ready to go to market. 

Pig iron is bought by factories to turn into rails, bridge and 
building iron, machines, engines, locomotives, rods, wire and nails, 
sheet iron, iron plates for war vessels, guns and cannon, farm 
machinery and tools, knives, and the thousand and one things of 
iron and steel that the world uses, from carpet tacks to war ships. 
Pig iron is simply raw material for making many kinds of iron and 
steel. You know your mother can make ever so many things out 
of white flour, by mixing different things with it and cooking them 
in various ways. So pig iron is melted again and made into cast, 
or wrought or galvanized iron, and many grades of steel, from bridge 
and rail steel to the finely tempered kinds used in watch springs 
and razors. It can be cast in molds, rolled into rails and sheets, 
drawn into rods and wire, and hammered on forges. Some iron 
works make only locomotives, some sewing machines, some knives 
and razors, some sheet iron, or wire, or nails, or plows, or stoves. 
So foundries and mills need a great many of those little iron pigs. 

One of the most interesting kinds of iron manufacturing is the 
making of steel rails in the rolling mills. In Pittsburg and Chicago 
rolling mills are owned by the same companies that melt the iron 
out of the ore in the blast furnaces. As soon as the iron pigs are 
cold they are loaded on cars and sent over a railroad track in the 


298 


THE LITTLE PIG THAT GOES TO MARKET 


yards to other furnaces to be made into steel. This time they are 
melted in big, pear-shaped pots fifteen feet high and eight feet across. 
The pots of thick boiler-plate bolted together, are lined with fire 
clay and swung on beams so they can be tipped over. As the pig 
iron in the pot melts, an air blast is forced through and makes it 
boil furiously. Certain things are put into it to change the iron to 
steel. As it boils crimson flames leap in the air. The flames turn 
orange, then yellow, then white, then an electric blue-white. At 
that point the pot is tipped and the dazzling, blue-white, molten 
steel is poured into oblong moulds. 

Each block, or ingot, of steel has enough in it to make a steel 
rail one hundred feet long. When the ingot is cold it is sent over 
the yard railroad again to the rolling mill. There it is heated to a 
bright red, and as soft, nearly, as putty. Tumbled from the furnace 
onto a travelling table of iron bars, it is suddenly gripped by enormous 
iron rollers like some giant clothes wringer with grooves in the rolls, 
and forced through the grooves. There it is squeezed and lengthened 
and sent on through one smaller hole after another. 

The old forge of Vulcan in the burning mountain could not have 
been hotter, or full of such thunderous crashes, of quivering air and 
flying sparks as a modern rail mill. The workmen are big men; they 
are stripped to the waist, and streaming with sweat. With long 
iron rods they turn and push and guide the glowing blocks of steel 
from one set of rolls to another. They never speak, for no human 
voice could be heard in the roar and crash. The last rolls begin to 
shape the lengthened block into a rail with a broad flat bottom, a 
curved top and grooved sides. It grows longer and longer, and more 
perfectly shaped, as it nears the end of the journey. At last it is 
laid on an iron grating to cool. 

Today iron and steel are taking the place of wood and brick 
and stone in building ships, bridges and fireproof skyscrapers. They 
are used in the finest palace cars, in making oil tanks, service pipes, 
bath tubs, expanded lath for plastering, pressed sheets for ceilings 
and walls, and for lining tunnels. The subway, or underground 
railway in New York is a double steel tube. Bridges and elevators 
are hung on wire rope. In old, old times men used stone hatchets. 
That was called the stone age. Then there was a bronze age when 
copper was made. Our time is called the iron age because we 
have learned to do so many things with iron. See Iron, Steel, 
Rolling Mills. 


POTTERY 


IV. THE WONDERFUL ART OF MAKING MUD PIES 

Isn’t it fun to make mud pies? 

You get dreadfully dirty, but no natural child minds that. 
Mama is apt to say that washing dishes is a much more useful thing 
to do. But you can tell her that if no one had ever made mud pies 
there would be no pretty white dishes to wash. Bricks to build 
houses, drain tiles, stone jugs, common dishes and the most delicate 
painted china cups and saucers and vases and doll-heads, were just 
mud pies once. They are all made of clay, ground up into flour, 
mixed with water, shaped and patted and baked in an oven. 

You know what pretty things the little tots in the kindergarten 
can model in clay. All they need is clay and water and ten clever 
little fingers. So you can readily believe that the wildest people 
who lived in caves and dressed in skins, and who had no tools at 
all, could shape bowls and jugs that would hold water and bake 
them in the sun. There was nothing the people of the earth learned 
to make earlier except, perhaps, the weaving of baskets of reeds 
and grasses. Some tribes wove baskets first and lined them with 
unbaked clay. When they tried to cook meat or grain in these vessels 
the baskets, of course, were burned. But how surprised and pleased 
they must have been to find that the clay lining was hardened by 
the fire. 

Then they found that these pots and bowls and jugs were apt 
to crack if the tiniest bit of gravel was left in the clay. And they 
found that some clays turned red when baked, some stayed yellow 
or white. They learned to pound the clay to powder, to melt it in 
water, to strain out all the little stones through baskets or grass 
sieves, to dry the melted clay, work it to a powder again, sift it, add 
water to make a smooth dough, shape the vessels by turning them 
around and around, bake them in pits, paint them and glaze them 
with a kind of glass. Indeed, some very simple people in many parts 
of the world, learned a little at a time by just having to learn, nearly 
all the things we know about pottery making today. The American 

299 


300 


THE WONDERFUL ART OF MAKING MUD PIES 


Indians learned these things, the Chinese and the people of ancient 
Egypt. 

Unless these vessels of burned clay were broken by accident, 
they would last as long as stone. So in caves and tombs, the oldest 
kinds of pottery have been found in many parts of the world. Some 
of them are beautiful in shape, in color and in ornamentation, and 
by studying them we can learn a great deal about the lives and the 
ideas of peoples who had no written language. Many people think 
we cannot make any better or more beautiful pottery today than 
was made hundreds and thousands of years ago. But we can make 
it more easily and cheaply by machinery, and in many more varieties 
and shapes, so that everybody can have quantities of it. 

In old, old times people mixed the clay and water with their 
hands and feet. You would have liked that. Mud is so nice and 
cool and “squshy” between the fingers and toes. But it was rather 
slow work. The first machine used in pottery making of today is 
a kind of big coffee mill for grinding the clay to powder. It is called 
a pug-mill. Pug is from “pucker,” a German, or perhaps Dutch 
word that means to beat, to pound. Very likely the Dutch people 
invented the pug-mill, for Dutch sailors brought the first “china- 
ware” from China itself to Europe, and then learned how to make 
the delicate white ware themselves. But when they had made it 
they called it porcelain, from the Portuguese name for a shell, “por- 
cellana.” Thin white “china” is much like a shell. 

Now the Dutch had wind-mills that did the hard work of pump¬ 
ing water, sawing wood and grinding grain. So it was only natural 
that these clever people should give the wind-mills a new task of 
grinding kaolin, or white clay for making porcelain. The pug-mill 
was just a wooden vat, fed from above by a hopper filled with clay. 
It had an upright shaft in the middle set with rows of strong blunt 
knives, to cut and beat and pound the clay lumps to powder. If 
your mother will let you, grind up some lumps of dry kindergarten 
clay in the coffee mill. It won’t hurt the mill, if you wash it 
afterwards. The powdered clay will fall into the cup or little 
wooden drawer at the bottom. The pug-mill in pottery works 
holds a ton or so of clay and is operated by steam with great 
wheels and flying belts and inside are broad blunt knives that 
turn on a shaft and chop and beat and grind. It works all the 
time and fills enormous bins with velvety clay flour, ready to make 
mud pies. 


THE WONDERFUL ART OF MAKING MUD PIES 301 

Such lovely mud workmen make in the big tanks when the clay 
flour is mixed with water and stirred into a milky paste' Think of 
the little china bowl you eat bread and milk from, once being an 
earthy milk itself, then dried to a dough and rolled and shaped and 
baked like the bread you put into the milk. 

When mama makes real bread out of moist dough, she sprinkles 
dry flour on the molding board. So potters mix a dry flour with their 
clay dough. Such queer flour! It is ground white flint stone. This 
stone flour is made in a pug mill, too, but in a covered one filled 
with water like a washing machine. The flint rock is heated to make 
it crumble easily. Then it is broken up into little pieces and ground 
in water by a perfect giant of an iron machine that thinks nothing 
of making stone into flour. As fast as it is powdered this flour over¬ 
flows with the water into a deep cistern vat. In that it settles to 
the bottom, and the water is drawn off. Then it is dried and rolled 
and mixed with clay dough. 

Before reading any farther turn back and read the story of how 
land was made in the first place. Many times before, in the life of 
our earth, the clay and powdered stone in the hands of the potter 
were mud. Wind and rain and sun and frost were the grinders, 
rivers and lakes were settling vats, the bottom of the sea was the 
molding board; the water above weighed on it and pressed it into 
shape. And thfe heat at the heart of the earth melted and baked 
the hardest rocks. Then it was lifted above the waters, and wind, 
sun and rain and frost wore it down to mud again. 

So in making pottery, bricks, tile, stoneware or porcelain, men 
only do over again what all the forces of nature do all the time. To 
make them into cups and plates and jars and doll-heads, the potter 
must grind the clay and stone again, melt them to paste in water, 
mix them, shape them while a soft mud or dough, put them into the 
fire and bake them again into a kind of stone. Isn’t that wonderful? 
It is just as if, in making pottery, men peeped into nature’s work¬ 
shop, learned one of her great secrets and turned it to use. 

And just as the sun sucks the water out of the hillside and 
leaves dust behind, so the potter sucks, or evaporates, water out of 
his tanks of mud with warm air. Machinery for blowing air is used 
for a great many things. Your lungs are a model. You use hot air 
from them to blow soap bubbles and to cool soup. So air blowers 
are used to clean carpets, to make a hotter fire in a blast furnace, 
to drill holes in mines, to pound rivets into iron bridges, and to dry 


THE WONDERFUL ART OF MAKING MUD PIES 


: i <)2 


the water out of potter’s clay. When the clay is dried to a tough 
dough the stone flour is kneaded in, and the potter shapes it in moulds, 
or turns it on a whirling, wheel-like table. 

The little kindergartners have a table that doesn’t move, and 
they shape the lumps of clay by turning them around and around. 
But the potter keeps the clay motionless and shapes it by whirling 
the table, bringing every side of the clay under his hand as he presses 
and shapes and hollows out the inside and smoothes the surface. 
Out of a lump of clay dough a lovely vase shape rises like magic under 
the potter’s skillful hands. It looks simple, but it takes years for 
the potter to learn how, very quickly and perfectly, to make any 
shape he wishes. 

Saucers and bowls and plates and many, many articles are 
molded over plaster of paris shapes. For a plate or saucer a sheet 
of clay, like a rolled piecrust, is pressed on a mould and smoothed 
on a whirling table by shaped metal scrapers. In making teacups 
the moulds are lined, as mama lines little patty pans for tarts. The 
potter smoothes the inside, first with his hand, then with a wet 
sponge. Handles and spouts are shaped separately and pasted on 
with a clay cement. 

These shapes of clay are set on boards in rows and dried, as 
you set your little mud pies in the sun. In very old times, and in 
countries where there was little rain, as in Egypt and on our Western 
deserts where the Pueblo Indians lived, the people used just sun- 
dried bricks to build their houses. But they found that water jars 
must be baked in a fire. All stone ware and the whitest porcelain 
are baked today in great kilns or fire-clay ovens, and cooled there 
slowly by drawing the fire so they will not crack easily. You know 
that cooling or heating suddenly cracks glass and china. 

After baking and cooling, pottery is glazed with a kind of glass. 
Some of the pieces are decorated before glazing, some after, by print¬ 
ing colored or gold bands or flowers on them, or by painting with 
metal powders and oils. Then it is baked again. With that glass 
skin on it, sun, wind and dust cannot mar the most delicate porcelain 
vase or cup. It is such a pity that so beautiful a thing, that it has 
taken so much work and skill to make, can be broken so easily by 
a careless person. 

In many museums in our country and in the old world you 
may see the earliest Indian, Egyptian and other primitive, unglazed 
pottery of strong colors, and quaintly shaped and ornamented. And 


THE WONDERFUL ART OF MAKING MUD PIES 303 

you may see the most exquisite Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Italian, 
Dutch, French, English, German and American art wares. For 
hundreds of years many peoples have been making pottery and 
porcelain too beautiful and costly for anything except to look at, 
as we look at paintings and statues. The clays were mixed, shaped, 
fired, painted, enamelled, polished, glazed and fired again by great 
artists. The finest examples are marked with the makers’ names 
burned in. And oh, what hero stories there are of famous potters, 
who worked years, and failed and suffered and at last succeeded in 
this lovely art. 

Pottery making is one of the few things very little children 
can do, and do well. In its simplest forms it needs as cheap materials, 
and as few tools as basket making. Modeling clay comes among 
school supplies ready for use, too. In many places are kilns where 
schools can have pottery fired. And there are models of very old, 
simply shaped pieces to copy, and old patterns of ornament that 
grew out of the lives of ancient peoples. So as you shape and paint 
and dry the jar or bowl or vase, you live again the history of the 
earliest workers in clay, and learn principles of form and ornament 
that are used in many arts. 

That kind of playing mud pies is useful and beautiful. Anyone 
can wash a dish after it is made, but just ask mama to read this story 
and then say if she thinks she could make a dish. (See Pottery, 
Palissy, Wedgwood.) 


WOODWORKING 


V. WHEN A TREE IS LUMBER 

Have you a wooden top to spin? As it spins, it stands upright 
on its tip. But the first time your top spun was when it was made. 
It was held between two pivots and whirled side w T ays. Spinning 
wheels are used in shaping rounded articles of wood, just as they 
are used in shaping clay. The clay worker’s whirling table is called 
the potter’s wheel, but the wood worker’s spinning wheel is called 
a lathe. In every house are examples of the wood turner’s work— 
in chair and table legs, in the spindles of stair and porch railings, 
and in the supporting columns of arches and mantels; yes, and in 
croquet balls and mallets and tenpins. 

The very first lathe that men made was like a top in one thing. 
It was kept spinning w T ith a string. One end of the string was fastened 
to a pole near the ceiling. The other end was wrapped around the 
block of wood that was to be shaped, and tied to a treadle. The 
treadle was kept going by the workman’s foot, just as your mama 
runs her sewing machine. The block of wood to be turned was clamped 
between two pivots and whirled with the wheel. As the block whirled 
toward him the workman pressed the sharp blade of a chisel against 
it and cut the wood away. 

The very simplest of old wood turning hand machines were called 
lathes. We do not know whether the word came from lath, the light 
pole that held the string, or from an old word that meant frame to 
hold things, or from lade, “to load;” for the lathe is a frame, and 
it carries the load or the weight of the wood that is being shaped. 
The machine lathe of today, operated by steam power and working 
automatically, or self-regulatingly, is made on the same principles 
as the treadle spinners of the earliest woodworkers. 

The pole and the wheel and string are gone, of course. In their 
place are cone-shaped pulleys and flying leather belts. Cone-shaped 
pulleys are several wheels, each one smaller than the last, welded 
together into one, and making a stepped cone. By shifting the belt 
from one wheel of the pulley to another, the workman can turn on 
slow or rapid power to suit the hard or soft wood he is carving, and 

304 


THE LUMBERING INDUSTRY 

The first stage in the lumbering industry is known as logging. Formerly the trees were felled in the 
forest in the winter, hauled on snow sleds to the streams, where they were piled on the banks, and in the 
spring, when the streams were free from ice, they were floated down to the mills. Most of the northern 
forests were cut and transformed into lumber by this method. 



Here is a typical lumber camp. These log 
houses or huts, the cracks plastered with clay, form 
snug, warm quarters for the army of loggers who 
live in them through the winter. 


Here we see men felling the trees. You will note 
that one of these men is right-handed and the 
other left-handed, so that they stand side by side 
and chop on opposite sides of the same tree. 
Sometimes the trees are cut down by a crosscut 
saw instead of an ax. 



After the trees are felled they are cut into logs of proper length with a crosscut saw, then they are 
gathered together and loaded onto strong, wide sleds and are hauled to the streams. Here we see a number 
of teams hauling immense loads of logs over the deep snow. It requires both hard labor and skill to build 
these great loads symmetrically so that they can be hauled safely. 













Courtesy Doubleday Page & Co. 

In the spring when the streams are at flood an 
army of loggers, often called Lumber Jacks, roll the 
logs from the bank into the stream, to be carried 
down by the current. Often the logs carried swiftly 
down the stream meet some obstruction, a jam is 
formed, and the logs arc piled up into a tangled 
mass, as we see in this picture. 



When the logs reach the lower and larger streams, 
they are gathered and fastened into long rafts and 
finally moored in the mill pond. Here they are held 
in place by what is called a boom, which consists 
of a long string of logs held together end to end 
by strong chains. 



Courtesy Doubleday Page & Co. 


Now comes to the Lumber Jack the test of courage, strength and skill. With shoes heavily spiked they 
step out on the jam of logs and, at the risk of life and limb, with long spike poles and cant hooks called 
peaveys, they dig and tug away at the logs that are on the lower side of the jam, loosening them and setting 
them afloat. The single log on which they stand often twirls under their feet and only their skill and the 
spikes in their shoes save them from destruction. 






















Courtesy of Clyde Iron Works 

The engine moves the skidder with frequent stops along the track and thus all the logs on eacft side of 
the spurs are hauled up to the side of the railroad, as we see in this picture. 


Courtesy of Clyde Iron Works 

Here we have a picture of a McGiffert log loader which loads the logs onto the cars, 
it may run along the same track on which are the cars to be loaded. It is so made that the trucks can be 
lifted the machine resting on legs, and thus a passage way under the machine is provided, so that the 
flat cars can run under the machine, as through a tunnel, until the forward car is brought under the boom 
Logs are lifted by the boom and placed on the car. When the car is loaded the train is pulled forward so 
that the next ear is in position for loading. This process goes on until all the cars are loaded Then 
machine is let down so that the wheels rest upon the track and the train is moved where desired. 


It is so built that 


he 












MODERN LOGGING 



Courtesy of Clyde Iron Works 


In modern lumbering a railroad Is run through the forest to be cut. From this main line are extended 
on either side branch roads, or spurs, at intervals from 1,000 to 2,000 feet. The road and the spurs are 
constructed in a cheap, temporary way. The trees on each side of the spur track, back to a distance of 
500 to 1,000 feet, are sawed down and cut into logs, as shown in this picture. 



Courtesy of Clyde Iron Works 


The machine shown in this picture is called a skidder. It is run along the spur track and draws the 
logs which have been cut to the railroad. The skidder is a steam machine mounted on a steel frame like a 
flat car and has long steel booms at each end. A steam boiler is set in the middle of the machine and there 
is an engine at each end provided with drums on which wire cables are wound. The cables run from these 
drums to the end of the booms through blocks and are taken back into the woods by means of lighter cables 
which are also wound on drums. The logs are attached to the skidding cables and drawn to the track by 
winding up the cables on the drums. 























WHEN A TREE IS LUMBER 


305 


the easy or difficult pattern that is to be cut. The frame that holds 
the block or bar of wood between the pivots can be shortened and 
lengthened by a sliding bar in the bed of the lathe. 

Automatic or self-regulating lathes are called “copying” lathes, 
because they copy patterns set for them, making millions of chair 
legs and stair spindles exactly alike. They work very much as the 
keys of a piano player are moved, by little knobs catching in the 
holes in the long paper rolls. You know you could play one tune 
over and over until the roll was worn out. Of course the carving 
chisel is held and moved by machinery too. 

All that the “turner” workman has to do today is to feed the 
machine with the wood blocks and shift the belt from one wheel to 
another. This is true in all kinds of factories. Less and less skill 
is needed in the workman and machines do the work of dozens and 
hundreds of men. Of course this gives us more things to use, but 
hand-made furniture and shoes and clothing and pottery is still the 
best. Beside lathes for turning rounded articles, there are lathes 
for boring holes and for making pegs by which parts of furniture 
are held together. There are lathes for cutting grooves, and for “ dove¬ 
tailing,” or tooth-notching the ends of boards that are to be joined 
to form boxes and bureau drawers. 

In woodworking shops a very important tool is the planer for 
smoothing sawed planks. A carpenter lays a plank on a bench and 
uses a hand-plane or a draw-knife to peel off long, white, sweet¬ 
smelling curly shavings. In the factory the bench is a travelling 
table that carries the board under' the chisel-blade of the planer. 
Then, as a carpenter sandpapers a board that must be made very 
smooth, so there is a machine for sandpapering. It is a broad 
travelling belt or drum coated with emery, or steel dust. It whirls 
over the planks and leaves them as smooth as satin. 

The very first tool that a tree makes acquaintance with when 
it is to be turned into lumber, is just a woodman’s axe, and then a 
cross-cut saw, both worked by hand. A man who knows, from the 
look of a tree, whether it will make good lumber or not, goes through 
a forest that is to be cut over, and marks the trees that should come 
down by cutting a chip from the trunk. After him come the sawyers 
and choppers. In our big American forests lumber camps are set 
up in the winter, with an army of men and horses. There is a man 
cook for the camp, and a blacksmith, and there are sledges and derricks 
and an armory of saws, axes and iron chains. 


306 


WHEN A TREE IS LUMBER 


After the marker come the sawyers with long, cross-cut saws 
that are pulled back and forth across the tree by two men. They 
saw part way through. Then choppers cut from the other side of 
the tree. A tree falls on the cut side with a crash. The choppers 
have to jump, sometimes. The trimmers follow to chop away the 
branches, big and little, and to cut off the slender top. At last there 
lies a mighty log, fifty, one hundred or more feet long. It may have 
taken it a century or longer to grow. It lies on the earth often as 
heavy as iron. Sometimes, as it lies there, it has to be sawed into 
two or three logs before it can be moved. The logs are lifted with 
derricks onto the low broad sledges and hauled to the nearest river. 

But first a road has to be made for the sledges. A snowy track 
is cleared of stones, trees and underbrush and is packed hard by the 
horses and sledges. Then it is flushed with water and let freeze. If 
it runs down hill and has no turns, it is a sort of “ coaster ” that makes 
the work easier for the horses. In the northern woods from Maine 
to Oregon, the logs are rolled down the banks of streams onto the 
ice. Then, when the ice breaks up in the spring, the logs go down 
on the flood to the saw mills. Drivers go with them, riding on the 
tumbling logs, guiding them with long iron rods, keeping them from 
piling up and jamming. This is very dangerous work, so log drivers 
get high wages. They bring the logs over the rapids and dams and 
down to the saw mills. In our Southern pine woods where there 
is no snow or frozen rivers, the logs are not moved at all, but the 
saw mills are set up in the forest, and moved when a section is 
cut over. 

Some of the big red-wood trees of California are thirty feet 
thick. That’s as thick as many a two-story house is high. They 
have to be sawed into several logs by enormous saws and then split 
with dynamite so they can be handled at all. Mahogany trees of 
Cuba and the hot countries of America often grow on mountains 
sides a hundred miles in the country. They are very heavy, hard¬ 
wood trees, often one hundred feet high, yet entire logs are got down 
to seaports, just by men and oxen, working with clumsy tools and 
solid-wheel trucks. Rosewood is brought out of the hot jungle along 
the Amazon River in South America. It is cut into ten foot logs, 
split, built into rafts and floated to the seaports. Teak logs are 
dragged out of East Indian forests by elephants. In nearly every 
country of the world are timber woods so valuable and beautiful 
that they are got to market at the greatest labor and expense. 


WHEN A TREE IS LUMBER 


307 


When any tree is first cut it is “green,” or full of sap. To be 
useful for lumber it must be seasoned, or dried. Sometimes, and 
with some kinds, as with teak, the tree is girdled by cutting a belt 
all around it and allowing it to die standing. A log is never allowed 
to lie on moist ground by good lumbermen, for then it would be 
attacked by insects and fungi, or toad-stool-like growths, and would 
quickly begin to decay. In our country logs are usually hurried to 
a saw mill and squared. That is, the bark is sawed away on four 
sides. Oaks are often quartered, that is, cut across the middle both 
ways, making four logs. These logs are then piled up in lumber 
yards for open air drying, or they are sawed into planks and then 
seasoned. 

Two kinds of saws are used in saw mills—the circular and the 
gang saw. The circular saw is a big toothed steel plate that revolves, 
cutting through a log as it turns. The gang saw is made up of a 
number of blade saws set in a frame like the blades of a safety razor. 
The “ gang ” goes through a log and cuts it into planks in one journey. 
The barrel saw used in cooper shops earns its name twice. It is 
shaped like a barrel stave and is used for cutting the curved staves 
of barrels, kegs, hogsheads and water pails. The band saw of furniture 
factories is really a flexible band or belt of steel, that turns over pulleys 
like a leather belt. It is used for scroll sawing, in making such things 
as the open-work music racks on pianos. 

And now, here is something very odd about saws. When men 
first began to make saws they set flint stone teeth into wooden blades. 
When they learned to make bronze, saw blades were cast or molded 
with toothed edges. Steel saws had the teeth cut on the blades. 
But it was discovered that the teeth wore and were sharpened aw r ay 
very fast, so the saw became constantly smaller and, by and by, 
useless, although the blade was perfectly good. Steel was made 
harder and harder, but still saw-teeth broke and wore away, in having 
to go buzz-zipping through hardwood logs. Then saw makers went 
back to the old, old idea of false teeth for saw’s. The teeth are made 
separately and set into the blade. When a tooth breaks or wears 
out a new one goes in. Doesn’t it seem strange that our latest saw 
goes back, for its new idea, to the flint-toothed wooden blade of 
primitive people? 

Have you ever seen a lumber yard? The planks are piled up 
in tall stacks, but every plank is separated from every other one by 
a cross-piece. This is to allow the air to get to every surface to season 


WHEN A TREE IS LUMBER 


80S 


the wood. Often shed roofs are built over piles of lumber to protect 
them from sun and rain that would warp and rot them. Wood is 
made stronger and more durable by seasoning. If not well dried, 
wood splits and warps after it is made up into furniture and house 
fittings. Slow drying in cool air is the best seasoning of all. After 
air seasoning, many fine cabinet woods, like mahogany, are sawed 
into boards a quarter of an inch thick or less for veneering, and then 
kiln-dried, or baked, in warm-air ovens. 

Great pains is taken to kill all insect life in wood. Ship timbers 
are soaked in 'brine. Some woods are steamed and dried. Some 
have the bark charred with a gas jet. Shingles are soaked in creosote 
to make them damp proof. Exposed wood is painted with lead 
paints or tars. Fine furniture woods and floors have their pores 
filled with resins, and are then steamed and varnished to protect the 
surfaces and to bring out the beauty of the grains. 

How many woods do you know after they are made up into 
useful articles? Nearly all of them are stained, even the finest of 
the hardwoods. In furniture we like darker colors than are natural 
in the woods. Oak is yellow, from almost white to an ochre, but 
we stain it all shades of brown. Mahogany is a light red that darkens 
with age, so we stain it a dark red. Birch, a yellow wood, stains 
to a good imitation of mahogany. Pine and ash take any stain, 
even the art colors of forest green and russet brown. Teak is a brown 
wood that the Chinese wood-carvers stain an ebony black, then 
carve and inlay with mother of pearl. The walnuts are stained soft, 
dark browns. White mahogany and bird-eye maple are two woods 
that are more beautiful unstained. But, as a rule, stains in acting 
unevenly, bring out the grains, the rays and curls in wood in greater 
beauty than if they are left in the natural colors. (See Forestry, 
Forest-Reserves, Lumbering.) 


MATCHES 


VI. JUST TO LIGHT A FIRE 

When the Puritans came to America they had to bring every¬ 
thing you could think of with them—even pins and needles and— 
matches ? 

Oh, dear no! There were no matches in those days, even in 
the old world. A tinder box was used to start new fires, and candles 
were lighted at the fireplace. It was a solemn thing to watch the 
father of the family start a fire. He took a little iron box down from 
the high mantel shelf. Inside of it were a bar of steel, a flint stone, 
a bit of charred linen, or “tinder,” and a bundle of w^ood splints 
tipped with sulphur. He struck the bar on the stone. A starry 
spark flew off on the tinder. Slowly a glow spread over the tinder. 
It did not burst into flames, but became hot enough to set fire to 
a sulphur-tipped splint. The splint was thrust into a handful of 
shavings and the blaze carefully fed into a fire with kindlings and 
pine knots. It w r as such a trouble to start a fire with a tinder box 
that coals were kept over night under ashes. If a fire went out a 
little boy was apt to be sent with an iron kettle, a mile away to borrow 
fire of a neighbor. Hunters learned to start camp fires as the Indians 
did, by rubbing two sticks together. Why, even Washington, who 
died nearly two hundred years after the Puritans came to America, 
never saw a match. And now we can buy a box of matches for a 
few cents. 

It seems very odd, now, that matches weren’t made long before 
they were, for people knew all about the two things necessary for 
making them. They knew that friction, or rubbing or striking things 
together, make them hot. And they knew that phosphorus and some 
other chemicals catch fire very easily. But it was only about a 
hundred years ago that phosphorus was melted with other things, 
and then hardened in little balls on the end of wood splints. And 
even then the matches would not burst into a blaze when struck 
on a rough surface. With the first boxes of matches came a little 
bottle of acid. The match was set on fire by touching it to the acid. 


310 


JUST TO LIGHT A FIRE 


Then the acid was put into a tiny hollow glass bead on the tip of 
the chemical soaked match. To light that match the glass was 
broken with a pair of nippers. Many of your grandfathers can 
remember the first friction sulphur matches. They were lighted 
with dreadful fumes that made one sneeze, by drawing the heads 
between folded sandpaper. Now you will want to know about how 
our safety matches of today are made, in big factories and by steam 
machinery. 

The most interesting and difficult thing about match making, 
the one that takes the most and the biggest machines, is the making 
of the little wooden sticks. Some match sticks are round, others 
square. The two kinds are made in quite different ways. The round 
ones are made by—well, did you ever see your mama make “riced” 
potatoes for dinner? She boils the peeled potatoes. Then she forces 
them through the little round holes of a fruit press or “ricer.” They 
come through mashed into fluffy strings that fall into grains like 
rice. A block of very soft wood, like pine or poplar, is forced end¬ 
ways through a steel plate punched full of round, sharp-edged holes. 
In that way the block is pressed through into round match sticks. 
Of course any wood is a great deal harder than boiled potatoes, so 
it takes a powerful machine to force a perforated steel plate, buzz- 
zip through a block of wood two and a half or three inches thick. 

To make the square match sticks, a round block of wood quite 
twelve or fifteen inches long is turned against a strong knife blade 
of the same length. The block is peeled away in a continuous ribbon 
of wood, just as thick as a match, until it is all peeled away, and no 
core is left. The ribbon is cut lengthways into five strips. Then 
the wood ribbons are fed to a machine that chops them into matches. 
One machine can chop off 10,000,000 match sticks in one day. 

After chopping, the sticks are dried with hot air in a huge whirling 
oven. If your kitchen stove should turn on its side and begin to 
roll over and over, that would be something like the revolving drum 
in which both round and square match sticks are dried. The oven 
is made to whirl for the same reason that you shake your popper 
when popping corn. It is to make the sticks dry evenly. In tumbling 
about together, too, splinters and rough edges are knocked off. Big 
drums are used a good deal in factories. In creameries the churns 
are big, whirling drums. In iron foundries, iron castings are put 
into a “tumbling barrel” to knock the rough edges from each 
other. 


JUST TO LIGHT A FIRE 


311 


After drying, the match sticks are shaken in sieves that sift 
out splinters and broken pieces. The good match sticks fall down 
into little places that are partitioned off, and lie side by side, as 
straight as in a box. Then a machine that seems almost to have 
brains in its little steel fingers, picks up a bundle of sticks, fastens 
them like pegs in little holes, each one separated from every other 
one, and gently lowers fifty or a hundred at a time, into melted par¬ 
affine wax, then into phosphorus mixed with other chemicals. 

As soon as a dripping frame full of matches is lifted from the 
phosphorus vat, it passes along a belt into a blast of cold air. This 
dries the heads quickly. A little farther on the dipping frame lets 
go of the matches. They fall, heads all one way, into another machine 
that puts them in neat rows into boxes. 

The pasteboard or strawboard boxes are made in the same 
factories. An endless roll of brown strawboard is fed in a broad 
sheet to a machine that cuts it into strips wide enough to make the 
four sides of a sliding box cover, or the bottom and sides of the box. 
Through one machine after another these strips go. The box cover 
is given four folds and pasted into a square-sided endless tube. The 
tube goes through a special printing press that prints the top and 
bottom and one side, and pastes a strip of sandpaper on the fourth 
side. Then the printed tube is cut up into box-length. Five hundred 
to a thousand boxes can be made every minute in a big match 
factory. A thousand boxes must be made every minute for ten hours 
every day to supply enough boxes for 100,000,000 matches. About 
one hundred and sixty matches are put in the ordinary box, and 
one dozen boxes in a package. Such a package is often sold for as 
little as eighteen or twenty cents. That is about a penny a hundred. 
Very old people can remember when matches were sold by the dozen, 
and people rolled paper lamp-lighters to save matches. 

A match lighted in the dark is a sort of little star. The phos¬ 
phorus on the head that flashes so instantly into flame, was named 
for a star, too. The Greek people called the morning star Phos- 
pho'rus, or light-bearer. When a substance was found in the earth 
that, united with the oxygen of the air, glowed or even burst into 
flame readily, it was named for the star. Now, of course, it would 
never do for Nature to leave so dangerous a thing lying about in 
lumps by itself. Phosphorus is always mixed with other things. 
For example, it is mixed with lime in your bones, and with tissue in 
the nerves and the brain. In match heads we want something that 


312 


JUST TO LIGHT A FIRE 


will light instantly on being struck, but that will behave itself at 
other times. Forms of potash and of manganese mixed with phos¬ 
phorus help to make better and safer matches. The very best matches 
of all are the “safeties,” that cannot be lighted anywhere except on 
the sand panel on the box. That is because the phosphorus is not 
on the match head but on the panel. 

Another thing that makes safety matches safe is that red phos¬ 
phorus is used. That is the most expensive, but the cheaper kinds 
of phosphorus are poisonous. Babies have been poisoned by biting 
match heads. You know a baby puts everything into his rosy mouth 
to see if it is good to eat. Cheap matches are not only very poor 
things, and dangerous to have about the house, but the workmen 
who make them are poisoned. They get a disease that softens the 
bones. Nowadays we think a good deal about the way in which other 
people are treated, and the conditions under which they have to 
work. In some states the poisonous kinds of cheap phosphorus are 
not allowed to be used, and if everyone refused to buy such matches 
at all they wouldn’t be made. 

In the study of Chemistry, that you will take up when you get 
into high school, you will learn many more interesting things about 
phosphorus and the other substances in match heads. Some day, 
some bright American boy who studies hard and makes experi¬ 
ments in chemistry, is going to invent a strike-anywhere safety 
match with no phosphorus in it. 

Edison could do it, very likely, if he gave his mind to it. Do 
you think you could? 



HOW MATCHES ARE MADE 




Copyright by Brown Bros. Copyright by Brown Bros. 

Here we see a log of soft wood which furnishes the material from which Here the blocks are being prepared for the veneering machine. The 

matches are made. The first process, as shown in the picture, is cutting bark is split off and the surface is trimmed with an ax. 

the log into short blocks. 















Copyright by Brown Bros. 

Here we see the veneering machine. The block is put into the machine and is turned against a strong 
knife which peels or shaves the surface into long ribbons of wood of the thickness of the match. 



Copyright by brown Bros. 

These ribbons or veneers are placed in the chopping machine where they are chopped into splints the 
size of a match. The picture shows the splints dropping into a large tray, as they fall from the chopping 
machine. 










Copyright by Brown Bros. 

The splints are next placed in the kiln for drying. Here we see a tray of splints being put into the kiln 
where it will remain for an hour, until the splints are thoroughly dried. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 

On the wall you will see the sign, “Employees must have their teeth filled." This is made necessary 
because the fumes of the phosphorus used in the manufacture of matches is a poison which finds its way into 
teeth cavities and causes what is called “ Phossy Jaw,’’ a serious and fatal disease. After the splints are 
dried, they are placed in the straightening machine which we see in the picture. Here they are tossed to 
and fro, which causes them to fall into the grooves, as shown. 














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Copyright by Brown Bros. 

This picture shows a man taking the trays of completed matches from the belt of the dipping machine. 
The girl then takes them into the packing room. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 


This machine is called a stripping machine. It cuts the paper from which the boxes are made into strips 
wide enough to make the bottom and sides of a box, or the four sides of a sliding box. 



































Copyright by Brown Bros. 

Here we see a machine for making boxes. This machine turns out sixty thousand boxes per day. The 
boxes are thrown by the machine upon a conveyor which carries them onto a chute. The chute leads to 
the floor below. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 

This is a machine which makes the book form matches. It turns out four hundred per minute. 











Copyright by Brown Bros. 

This is the most modern machine for making small size boxes. The machine prints the name, glues, 
folds and sands the box. This machine can turn out five hundred boxes per minute. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 

Here we have a view of the packing room. The matches are packed in boxes, and these boxes are packed 
by the dozen or gross into larger boxes. Every day sixty thousand packages are packed in this room and 
made ready for shipment. 

































GLASS MAKING 


VII. A LOOK THROUGH A WINDOW INTO ONE OF 
NATURE’S WORKSHOPS 

When you make taffy, you drop a spoonful of the boiling mixture 
into a glass of cold water to find out when it is just right to pull. 
Wouldn’t it surprise you to learn that the glass itself was made in 
much the same way as you make taffy? First the materials are 
boiled together until the mixture is just right to pour into moulds, 
or to be stretched into bubbles or rolled into plates. 

This seems strange of anything as hard and brittle as glass, 
doesn’t it? But, in the great world of things that men make, it 
seems to be much as it is in the world that nature makes. There 
are only a few ways of doing things. The man who invented the 
spinning frame for making cotton yarn got the idea in an iron rolling 
mill. And there are only a few things to make everything out of. 
These are the elements of the earth, the air and water. So when we 
speak of men making things, we do not really mean what we say. 
All men can do is to take the things that are already made and com¬ 
bine them in new ways, or make new uses of them. Very, very often 
they merely find, things that never were hidden. 

Glass is one of the things that was found. No one knows just 
where or how it was found first. But very likely it was in Egypt, 
where the soil is mostly sand. You have noticed how sand shines, 
how it glares under the sun. Glass and glaze and glare all mean 
much the same thing. Now, in Egypt, straw stacks were often burned. 
In the ashes lumps of glass were found. If you were to find a lump 
of glass in ashes today, you would naturally think it a bottle that 
had been melted in the fire. But in old Egypt there were no bottles, 
no manufactured glass at all. The straw stacks of Egypt stood on 
sandy soil. Sand melted alone does not make glass, but when mixed 
with soda it does. There is soda, or potash, in ashes. The ashes 
of the straw, fused with the sand, very likely, and hardened into lumps 
of glass. And, besides, there is some glass, or silica, in straw itself, 
and in many other plants. Did you ever cut your hand on the sharp, 

313 


314 A LOOK THROUGH A WINDOW INTO NATURE’S WORKSHOPS 

glassy edge of a grass-blade? It is just possible that the straw itself 
furnished all the materials for the lumps of glass. All that was 
needed was a hot enough fire to melt them together. 

The finding of glass where straw had been burned, set those 
wide-awake Egyptians to thinking and experimenting. They learned 
to mix sand with ashes, melt them together, and mould, roll and 
blow glass into various shapes when it was soft and hot. Our word 
“soda,” is the name the early Italian glass makers gave to ashes. 
“Soda” really means solid. Today, by soda, we mean an alkali. 
But soda still has that old meaning of soldering or solidifying. It 
was the soda that fused the sand into a solid mass. 

If one of your window panes could tell the story of its birth in 
a fiery furnace it would say something like this: “I have some of 
the same things in me as you have. Two of them are silica and lime. 
You have silica in your glossy (glassy) hair, and lime in your bones. 
Pure white sand is nearly all silica. And I was made with heat. 
You couldn’t live unless you were made warm either. I needed 
more heat than you, that’s all. You use sunshine. I used dead 
and gone sunshine—coal. As the plant is made up of little cells that 
the sun acts upon, so every grain of sand in me was acted upon by 
the fire. 

“The heat made the little silica cells in the sand fly apart, and 
it separated all the other things that are in the sand from them. 
Then the silica particles flowed together again. ‘ Birds of a feather 
flock together,’ you know. Iron particles flock together when the 
iron ore is melted. So do gold and silver and silica, or glass. The 
particles in the sand that are not glass go off by themselves. Where 
do you suppose they go? 

“They just evaporate or disappear in gas. They are attacked 
by the soda. Soda, lye, potash, or some other alkali does something 
of the same sort to fats and oils in making soap. It breaks up the 
fat and eats particles that are not soap. Lime is the purifier, making 
impurities float to the top. You purify your house with lime. Heat 
helps, too, as it helps soda and sour milk make a gas to raise mama’s 
biscuits in the oven.” 

Clean, white sand, soda and lime are put into enormous pots 
of fireclay in very hot furnaces. Some broken glass is added. For 
seed? Perhaps. It may be that the bits of glass, having been through 
the process before, are able to show the way to the raw materials. 
In making the big clay pots pieces of old pots are mixed with the 





! glassmakers at their work 


The man on the left has just been gathering glass from one of the huge furnaces. The 
next man is blowing the glass for a French coffee pot. Ihe one next is cutting glass. 
He holds it against a wheel, kept wet by water dropping through that tube. 




Here we are in the yard of a glass bottle factory. That heap of broken bottles will 
be made into new ones. The white substance in the bin is soda, w'hich is used to make 
the glass melt faster in the furnace. 


Photographs on this page copyrighted by Brown Bros., N. Y. 


Here is a man at work at a small fuel oil furnace at which globes or bottles are re-heated 
previous to finishing. The next picture shows a workman finishing a fish globe which has 
been previously heated at the furnace. 




















































GLASSMAKERS AT THEIR WORK 


On the left are two of the huge pots which set inside of the furnace. In them the 
glass is melted. On right is a workman preparing glass for being drawn out into tubes. 


This illustration shows how glass tubes are made by drawing the molten glass, as you 
would pull taffy candy. 


Photographs on this page copyrighted by Brown Bros., N. Y. 

This man is shaping and cooling a glass bottle by turning it on a stone table called 


I 

i 

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I 

1 

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i 


this man is shaping and cooling a glass bottle by turning it on a stone table called i 
a “mart.” When ready for shipment bottles are placed in frames as shown in this next 
picture. 


















A LOOK THROUGH A WINDOW INTO NATURE’S WORKSHOPS 315 

raw clay. And scrap iron is added to pig iron. Dear, dear, who 
would think it. “Come on, all of you, I know the way,” the broken 
bottles seem to say to the sand, lime and soda. So they all melt 
and run together. Whisk! A lot of matter out of place goes away 
into gas and leaves a thick, taffy-like, crystal paste in the pot, with 
some worthless skimmings on top brought up by the lime. You 
know how you have to skim the dirt and foam that boils up on taffy 
and jelly? So you do on glass and iron. 

This is the first part of making all glass. Next comes the blower. 
He is a big, sweaty man with a pair of lungs like a blacksmith’s 
bellows. His only tool is a six foot long, hollow iron pipe to blow 
bubbles with. It is just the stem of a pipe, really, for it has no bowl. 
He heats the end of the pipe in the furnace, then dips it into the hot 
glassy paste, and turns it around until he has gathered a lump as 
big as a goose egg. He swings this in the air to cool it a little, then 
dips it in to take up some more glass. A third time he does this. 
He now has a lump as big as a small melon, and that weighs eight 
or ten pounds. You know glass is very dense and heavy, like iron. 

He cools the glass a little more in a water bath. Then he rolls 
it on a polished iron table to the shape of a little Hubbard squash 
or big pear. It is still very hot and soft when he begins to blow 
his big glass bubble. He stands on the edge of a pit to blow, for the 
weight drags the bubble out long, and his breath stretches it wide. 
As the bubble becomes thinner it cools more rapidly. So he takes 
it to the furnace to heat and soften it several times, until it is blown 
as thin as a pane of window glass. 

At this stage he cuts off the neck of the bubble and the end, 
making a big cylinder, or open glass drum that he catches on his 
pipe and warms in an oven. The warm, soft glass cylinder is rested 
on a table, split from end to end with a diamond glass cutter and 
carried to another oven. Then, when soft, it is ironed out into a 
flat sheet. The sheet is tempered, or heated and cooled slowly, ironed 
and polished and cut into window glass for shipping. 

Bottles are made by blowing small lumps of glass into iron 
or brass two-part moulds. Plate glass for show windows, and thick 
mirrors, is rolled. Liquid glass of fine quality, with no flaws or 
bubbles or color, is poured from the melting pots onto perfectly smooth 
steel tables and rolled with steel rollers into sheets, as your mother 
rolls pie-crust. It is so heavy that the pots are lifted and tipped 
by cranes, and the tables are carried on wheels to tempering ovens. 


316 A LOOK THROUGH A WINDOW INTO NATURE’S WORKSHOPS 

Two plates are rubbed together to polish them, and the polishing 
is finished by hand. 

Flint glass, from which microscopes, spectacles and cut glass 
is made, is the finest of all. It must be as clear as water. This is 
moulded into “blanks,” just the shape that is wanted. Then the 
patterns are cut on them with iron wheels, or “grindstones,” on 
which water drips. A second and a third wheel are used to deepen 
the cuts and to polish them. The last wheel is of wood, covered 
with a soft powder, to give the cuttings a diamond brilliancy. It 
is all this work, and the danger of breaking in cutting and shipping, 
that makes our beautiful cut glass so costly. 

The most costly of all is colored art glass for church windows, 
lamp shades and vases. The glass is first made clear white. Then 
it is painted with metal oxides (rust). The metals are reduced to 
powder with acids, as iron is rusted by the oxygen of the air. After 
painting, the glass is heated, melting the metal oxides all through 
it. So you see, when glass must be clear, as in spectacles and micro¬ 
scopes, cut glass and mirrors, no metals must be left in. Sands with 
metals can be used for cheap bottles, and these are often green or 
brown. In the fine stained, or art glass, the metals are broken up 
and painted on very carefully. 

It is a curious thing that, although window glass is among the 
commonest and cheapest kinds made today, it is more difficult in 
some ways to make. Long after art glass was made, windows had 
still to be fitted with plates of mica, such as we use for the little 
windows in base burners. It was mica, no doubt, of which the apostle 
wrote: “We now see as through a glass, darkly.” It was not until 
the thirteenth century that plate glass was made. But ancient glass 
makers made bottles, cups, beads, dice, chessmen, hairpins, pillars 
for theaters and'palaces with lamps inside of them, and even glass 
coffins. 

The Egyptians seem to have made glass first. The Phoenicians 
learned the art of them and passed it on to the Greeks. The Romans 
learned it next, but the city of Venice raised glass making from a 
useful to a fine art. Venetian glass today is one of the art wonders 
of the world. Next a ruby glass was made in Bohemia. 

Some of the great museums are proud of their historical collec¬ 
tions of glass, with examples centuries and centuries old. They 
furnish chapters in the history of the world more important than 
jointed and chain armor, battle axes and swords. Over against the 


A LOOK THROUGH A WINDOW INTO NATURE’S WORKSHOPS 317 


wars that destroyed lives and property were these conquests of 
peace. In the darkest, blood-stained ages, men were conquering the 
stubborn secrets of nature and building things of use and beauty. 

Did you know that we have added a chapter to the story of 
glass? We excel the world in glass cutting, and now we are making 
Tiffany art glass. It is quite unlike any art glass ever made before. 
It is used in church windows, lamp shades, and in many useful and 
ornamental forms. Some of it has all the colors and the airy, fragile 
grace of soap bubbles, as if deep sea shells and pearls were made 
transparent and luminous. To see it makes an American proud, 
for people who can make such a lovely thing have a place in the age- 
old procession of art, with Greek sculptures and Italian paintings. 


RICE GROWING 

VIII. THE BREAD OF NOGI, WUNG FOO AND MANUELO 

If you should ever go to Japan, one of the very first things you 
would want to buy is a fat little image that is to be found in all the 
curio shops. It will remind you of Billikens, the comical little “god 
of things as they ought to be.” A jolly fellow is this Japanese Dai 
Goku. He always sits like a well-fed miller on a pile of grain bags. 
If you cannot remember his name, just try asking for Oryza San. 
That means Honorable Mr. Rice God. Dai Goku is the deity of good 
fortune who brings big rice crops, and gives everybody plenty to 
eat. No wonder he is popular. His image is in thousands of low, 
thatch-roofed, wooden houses, in the farm villages of Japan. 

The Japanese are such hard workers, and such wonderfully 
clever farmers, that Dai Goku really cannot have much to do but 
sit in a little niche and grin, and make the toilers feel cheerful. But 
that helps wonderfully. “A merry heart goes all the day,” you 
know. In Japan, the day begins early and ends late, and everybody 
but much-beloved, honorable grandmother and the baby-who-never- 
cries, has to work. From every farm village a procession of men, 
women and children marches to the rice fields at dawn. They all 
wear single, short garments of blue cotton, and butter-bowl shaped 
straw hats, as big as a little girl’s Sunday parasol. Their legs are 
bare to the knees, for rice is a flood crop, and they have to slop around 
in mud and water all day. 

In swamps? No, indeed. Rice doesn’t like sour marsh land 
that is always flooded. Japanese rice farms are just as likely as 
not to be perched up on a steep mountain slope. Japan is nearly 
all rough country, with deep valleys and high mountains. But so 
many millions of people are crowded into the country, that every 
little bit of good land has to be made use of. Fortunately there is 
plenty of water. Hundreds of sparkling brooks tumble and foam 
down the rocks, bringing good soil with them. The Japanese dam 
these streams high up, and lead the water down through ditches that 
wind from one little farm to another, and drop from level to level. 
They cut the slopes, too, into broad shelves or terraces, and bank 

318 


PLOWING RICE LAND WITH WATER BUFFALO. NATIVES IN PHILIPPINES WINNOWING RICE BY HAND. 




























A SHEAF OF RICE. 






THE BREAD OF NOGI, WUNG FOO AND MANUELO 


319 


the one and two acre farms with earth to hold the water. Many a 
mountain slope glitters with flower and grass rimmed rice-ponds, as 
if set with silver mirrors. Wouldn’t you like to see such pretty 
water farms? 

The rice plants are started in forcing beds in the village. While 
they are sprouting the fields are broken up with mattocks or spades, 
smoothed over and flooded with water. Into such fields a whole 
village of families wade. They poke holes in the mud with sticks 
or their fingers, and set the plants in rows a foot or eighteen inches 
apart, and clear under the water. In a few days the grass-like green 
blades shoot up into the sunlight. Each root spreads and sends up 
several stalks, so the field is covered and looks not unlike a field 
of young oats, except for the glimmer of water among the stems. 
When well started the water is let out into the ditches, the field 
is weeded, the soil loosened and the water turned on again. Flooding 
and weeding alternate, until the straw begins to turn yellow. Then 
the water is drained away, and the crop ripens in the sun. 

The rice is cut, straw by straw, with a hand sickle. It is threshed 
by pulling the heads through a saw-toothed frame. It is beaten 
with flails to free the husks, and cleaned of the tight-fitting brown 
skin in rude hand mills. Only the rice that is to be sold in the cities 
is sent to mills to be cleaned between millstones, and polished on 
skin-covered rollers into shining white grains. 

Rice is the bread of hundreds of millions of yellow and brown 
people. If you could see how hard they all work, in countless tiny 
fields, in wet, hot lands, you would be glad if they all had a Dai Goku 
to help and to cheer them. They have no big, strong horses as we 
have in our wheat fields, no sulky plows and harrows and reapers, 
on which the workers can ride comfortably, no steam threshers and 
mills. Most of them work with the rudest tools, and with their bare 
hands. Some have clumsy, slow animals. In Japan are shaggy, pack 
ponies shod with rice-straw pads of shoes; and now and then a little 
wooden-wheeled cart is seen, but the drivers have to walk. In 
northern China, donkeys are used for pack horses. In southern China, 
Burma and the Philippine Islands are water buffaloes for plowing, 
dragging solid-wheeled carts, and working treadmill pumps. But 
oh, if you could see the big crops that are raised—an acre or two 
growing food for a family for a whole year—you would think we 
might learn a great deal about scientific farming from people who 
can seldom read or write. 


320 


THE BREAD OF NOGI, WUNG FOO AND MANUELO 


In China, the rice field are in the flood lands along the big rivers. 
There, it is often a question of keeping the water out when it is not 
wanted. So banks have to be built, and treadmill pumps used. And 
the rivers themselves, filled with water as thick and brown as bean 
soup, are dredged with baskets to bring up the rich soil to spread 
on the fields. Tens of thousands of men work these treadmills and 
dredging baskets by hand. Men are even hitched to rude, wooden 
plows. Blind-folded water buffaloes walk patiently around and 
around the pumps. As in Japan, nothing is wasted. Straw is cut 
off at the roots. It is woven into hats and sandals, matting and 
bagging. Roots are carefully burned and the ashes scattered to 
fertilize the fields. 

In Burma, the banks of the Irawadi River is one long rice field. 
Water buffalo drag wooden plows and log harrows. Women and 
children punch holes in the mud with their fingers and set the plants. 
There “every one works but father.” He sits on a flowery bank 
and smokes and sees that his family keeps busy. The grain is 
threshed by the water buffalo that trample it on hard ground. In 
India, the swarming people are terribly poor. They scratch the earth 
to dust with pointed sticks, weed and flood the land, cut the grain 
with sickles or little knives, pound the husks off in wooden mortars 
and do every part of the work by hand. 

If you look in a big Geography you can find all these countries 
—Japan, China, India, Burma, Siam and Malay peninsula in a big 
continent called Asia. The hundreds of millions of people who live 
in these countries are mostly yellow. Some are white, and down 
in Malay they are brown. Rice is the bread of all of these people. 
And trailing out into the sea, from Malay and Japan, are hundreds 
and thousands of big and little islands where chiefly brown people 
live. Our Philippine Islands are among them, and they alone have 
ten million people. In all these lands and sea islands, rice is grown 
in much the same way, by the hardest hand labor. In Java the 
small brown people put little temples, like pigeon houses, in the rice 
fields, in honor of a goddess who blesses their labor. To these temples 
they bring gifts of food—sugar cane, ripe fruit and bowls of boiled 
rice to keep her in a good temper. For oh, they all know that they 
may work hard, and still the wind and rain and sun may go wrong, 
and the crop fail. Then they are poor indeed! 

But in many of these warm islands, there are bananas and pine¬ 
apples and cocoanuts, and other good things to eat growing wild, 


THE BREAD OP NOGI, WUNG FOO AND MANUELO 


321 


and fish in the sea for the catching, and bamboo and palms for build¬ 
ing houses and boats and nets, so the rice crop is not of such tragic 
importance as it is in parts of Japan, China and India. In the Philip¬ 
pines the growing of rice is not made so much of a task. Few families 
grow more than is needed for their own use. Every family has a 
humpy, horny, pig-skinned water buffalo, to drag the plow and pull 
the cart. Lazy brown children sprawl on the flowery banks around 
the fields and watch the clumsy cow struggle in the mud. Each cow 
has a friendly crow or crane on her back to catch the flies that annoy 
her, so she doesn’t trouble to switch her tail. Brown women in big 
straw hats, red calico skirts and white cotton jackets put in the 
plants, weed them and cut the grain with sickles. The buffaloes 
tread out the grain. And it is a daily “chore” for the children to 
pound hulls from rice in wooden troughs, and toss the grains in baskets 
to let the chaff blow away. 

In the southern part of the United States rice is grown, too. 
From Carolina to Texas along warm gulf shores are many stretches 
of rice fields. But how differently they are worked. The fields are 
large, and they are owned by white men. They are cultivated by 
negro laborers who are paid good wages; and oxen, mules and fine 
machinery are used. The seeds are sown in deep, water-filled trenches 
a foot and a half apart. The entire field is flooded after planting. 
Everything is done with machinery and animals—plowing, reaping, 
threshing, hauling, milling and shipping to the nearest seaport. 

It is this Carolina rice that you eat—the long, pearly white 
grains that make such good puddings, or that is served for a breakfast 
cereal with sugar and milk, or in the place of potatoes with stewed 
chicken. Really, as a food, rice is more like potatoes than wheat. 
It is three-fourths starch. In the brown skin, that is polished away 
for us, is a small amount of gluten, not one-third as much as there 
is in wheat. Fortunately, the poor people who live on rice cannot 
throw away this good brown skin. They have no milk or meat gravy 
to add to it. In the warmer islands sugar cane is grown, and brown 
sugar is cheap. But in China and Japan the poorest people feel very 
lucky if they have a little weak tea to drink, and some dry salt fish 
to cook with their rice. 

We have several names for wheat—wheat when it is in the field 
and in the threshed grain, flour when it is ground, and bread when 
it is baked. Many rice-eating people have five names for their chief 
food—one in the field, one when cut, one when threshed, one when 


322 


THE BREAD OF NOGI, WUNG FOO AND MANUELO 


milled (paddy), a fourth name when polished white, and a final name 
when it is cooked. It is cooked in only one way—plain boiled or 
steamed, whether it is meant for the table of the Emperor or for a 
peasant. But there are as many varieties of rice as there are of 
apples. There is cheap, dark, small-grained “coolie” rice, and big, 
fat, white “mandarin” rice. The finest rice of all, like the finest 
tea, is used by the royal family. 

Thousands of years ago the Emperor of China used to head a 
splendid procession, and sow the first rice seeds of the season in 
the palace water fields. That ceremony was supposed to insure good 
crops to the toiling millions. Perhaps that was the origin of the 
little good-luck god, Dai Goku, of Japan. He certainly looks very 
old and wise and kind. See Rice, page 1610. 



WATCHES AND CLOCKS 

IX. BROWNIE TICK-TOCK AND THE STARS 

It’s great fun to hold a watch up to a baby’s pink ear. He is so 
as-ton-ished by the busy tick-tick-ticking. One little girl remembers 
thinking a Brownie did the ticking, and that the mouse that ran up 
the clock did the striking. When the little gold back doors were 
snapped open, she fully expected to see a live playmate pop out. 
Before any child can talk plain he wants to know what makes the 
wheels go ’round. 

Once there were only clocks, and clocks without ticks, at that. 
A clock without a tick seems as odd as the smile without a cat in 
Alice in Wonderland. In pictures, Old Father Time carries an hour¬ 
glass clock. In an hour-glass it takes just one hour for the sand to 
run through a little hole from one hollow glass cone to another. It 
is wound up by turning it over at the end of every hour. Really, 
Father Time ought to carry the sun, or a bunch of fire-cracker stars. 
They are the oldest and best timekeepers. 

If you were to stand still, all day, in a sunny field, and watch 
your shadow grow shorter, up to noon, then jump around to the 
other side and grow longer until sunset, you might think of making 
a shadow clock, or sun-dial. A sunbeam, shining through a hole in 
a roof, makes a moving golden spot on the floor below. If you ever 
go across the ocean to the old world, you may see stone sun-dials 
in castle gardens, and clock-faces in the marble floors of great churches. 
Shadows and sunbeams were the first hour hands. 

In old, old times people didn’t have to catch trains, nor little 
children go to school, so minutes were not very important. But 
they did want to measure the exact length of eclipses of the sun 
and moon. A little over three hundred years ago, a great astronomer 
named Galileo was in a church, when some one bumped into a hang¬ 
ing bronze lamp and set it swinging. Back and forth it went, back 
and forth, as regularly as—guess! The pendulum of a grandfather’s 
clock. When it slowed down and stopped—when “the old cat died,” 
as you say when you stop swinging, he started it again with a push. 

323 


324 


BROWNIE TICK-TOCK AND THE STARS 


You can make a pendulum with an apple and a string hung from a 
gas jet. It took another hundred years to fit wheels and weights to 
pendulums so they could be kept swinging for a whole day and night. 

To understand what makes the wheels go ’round in papa’s 
watch, a little boy or girl would better begin with the big grand¬ 
father’s clock in the hall. What a broad, pleasant, honest face it 
has. Twelve numbers it has, evenly spaced on a circle, like the old 
stone sundials, and two hands moving around to point the hours 
and minutes. On the lower side is a small dial with a tiny hand 
racing around it and counting the seconds. The hour and minute 
hand are fastened to axles that are pushed through a hole in the 
middle of the dial. Axles are the centers of wheels, you know, so 
there are wheels behind the dial. In the face of the clock are two 
more holes. These are key holes for winding up the weight and the 
hammer that strikes the hours. A watch has no key holes. It is 
wound up by the stem. 

That is all you can see until you open the tall, narrow door 
below the face. There, in a sort of closet, the long pendulum swings 
back and forth, its bright brass “bob” winking in the light. And, 
at one side, a heavy iron weight hangs on a stout cord. “Tick-tock” 
is all a clock says to most grown-up people. But to children and 
poets it says all sorts of things. One thing it says, if you are small 
enough to squeeze in behind the pendulum, is: “Tick-tock, fennel- 
and-dock, jump-in-quick and climb-up-the-clock! ” If you were a 
Brownie you could scramble right up the pendulum rod or the weight 
cord and find the “tick.” 

But eyes can climb where little boys can’t. Look up into that 
Chinese puzzle of wheels behind the clock dial. The pendulum rod 
goes up to a sort of beam near the roof. There it is hung by a thin 
slip of steel that bends easily and makes a spring. It allows the 
pendulum to swing just so far, and then gives it a little push back. 
Now look up the weight cord. The cord is ever so long. The upper 
end of it is wound around a drum or barrel, very much as the rope 
of an old oaken bucket is wound on a windlass. The weight pulls 
on the cord and barrel all the time, but it cannot move them until 
the pendulum is set swinging. Start the pendulum and see what 
happens. The whole clock wakes up, like the palace in Sleeping 
Beauty. 

The pendulum lifts one leg of an anchor-shaped piece of metal 
that is locked in the saw-teeth of a wheel. When this wheel is 


1 


SKILLED WORK IN TIMEPIECES 



THINK OF PUTTING ALL THE PARTS SHOWN IN THE NEXT PICTURE 
IN THIS “BABY” WATCH FOR A LADY'S RING, THE WATCH HERE 
SHOWN IS SET BETWEEN A RUBY AND A DIAMOND AND IS WORN 
OUTSIDE THE GLOVE. IT KEEPS PERFECT TIME. 



These are not quite all the parts of a watch, all of which are contained in the one 
shown in the lady's ring. And remember that every part must be perfect. Imagine the 
skill required in making these parts in the first place and then in putting them together. 
No wonder the watchmaker must work with a microscope in his eye! 



With the watches on the left vou could tell time in the dark. They are made for the 
blind. The figures on the dial are raised dots, one for every hour. On the right is i 
group of clocks in a jeweler’s window in Berlin that give, all at once, the time in Berlin, 
Paris, St. Petersburg, London, New York, San Francisco, Pekin and iokio. 


ti 
































































































BROWNIE TICK-TOCK AND THE STARS 


325 


unlocked it turns a little. This allows the barrel to turn. The cord 
and weight pull on the barrel, too, to help it turn. And this sets all 
the other wheels in motion. You didn’t know that all the wheels 
in a clock are called a “train of wheels” did you? They are all 
coupled together, just as a train of cars are, and travel together. 
The pendulum seems to be the engineer; the locked wheel is the 
throttle; the barrel, cord and weight are the engine, furnishing the 
power to pull the train. The locked wheel is a safety valve, too, 
as well as a throttle. 

The little saw-toothed wheel and the anchor, or lever catch, 
are there to tell all the other wheels not to go too fast. Every time 
the pendulum swings, a tooth of this wheel is let go. Then another 
tooth is caught and held an instant. This catching and letting go 
make the clicking or ticking sound in watches, and the solemn tick- 
tock of big clocks. The wheel and the catch are called the “escape¬ 
ment,” because the wheel turns around, or escapes, only one tooth 
at a time. At every tick the escapement says: “ Not-so-fast,” and 
at every tock, ‘ Go-ahead.” You see, when the cord and weight 
begin to pull on the barrel, it would whirl over and over, as fast as 
it could, if nothing held it back. Then all the wheels would fairly 
race, until the weight had dropped to the bottom. There would be 
a grand smash-up, if the escapement wasn’t there to hold them all 
to a steady gait. 

The whole duty of a good clock is to drive the hour hand at a 
regular rate of travel around the dial, twice in twenty-four hours. 
So the barrel turns entirely over twice, letting down two coils of 
cord. In an eight-day clock the cord is wound around the barrel 
sixteen times. On the rear end of the barrel is fixed the hour wheel. 
Both turn together. The minute wheel and the second wheel are 
fitted there, too. All of these turn on other wheels and pinions. The 
axles of the pinions are extended and pushed through the dial to 
carry the hour, minute and second hands. So these hands just 
have to turn when the wheels turn. 

Sometimes a clock goes too fast or too slow, and must be 
regulated. A grandfather’s, or other pendulum clock, is regulated 
by pushing the “bob” of the pendulum up or down on the rod. The 
time it takes a pendulum to swing, depends upon the length of the 
rod. In a watch, or a spring clock, there is a key-stone shaped 
indicator plate right over the coiled spring. One side is marked S 
(slow) and the other F (fast). A movable pin over this plate regulates 


326 


BROWNIE TICK-TOCK AND THE STARS 


the swing of a fussy little wheel that rocks back and forth like a 
cradle. 

Of course you have guessed that this rocking wheel in the watch 
is really the pendulum wheel. There is no room in a watch for a 
long pendulum rod and “bob” to swing. And there is no room for 
a cord and weight and big barrel to furnish power. The “engine” 
of a watch is a blue-steel coiled spring. The escapement, or little 
saw-toothed wheel and catch, is in the watch, just as it is in the 
clock. Ask your papa to open his watch at the back. Over these 
parts the plate is cut away, so you can find all of them. 

Ask your papa to keep the back door of his watch open while 
he winds it up by the stem. Then you can see the loose, open coils 
of the main spring come closer together, so the spring fills less space. 
A clock is wound with a key that slips through a key-hole, over the 
axle of the barrel, in the dial face. The key winds the spring in a 
spring clock, or winds the cord around the barrel in a pendulum 
clock. The other key-hole in the clock face is to wind up the wheel 
that controls the striker. At the end of every hour, the hammer con¬ 
nected with this wheel is lifted to strike a bell, from one to twelve 
times. To put a wheel, a spring and hammer and a bell in so a clock 
could do its own striking, was a wonderful improvement. Once a 
town or a church had to keep a man to pull a bell rope, to make the 
big clock in the tower strike the hours. 

A watch is the most wonderful little machine in the world. 
Packed away in mama’s watch, that is no bigger around than a silver 
quarter and less than half an inch thick, are one hundred and fifty 
or more separate parts. There are wheels of many sizes and shapes, 
pinions, plates, screws, rivets, pins, springs and “jewels.” Many of 
these parts are so small that watch-makers pick them up with 
tweezers or magnets, and find the places for them by screwing a 
magnifying glass in one eye. Wouldn’t you like to go through a 
watch factory and see all these parts made and put together? 

The first things you see in a watch factory are spinning wheels— 
little whirling tables no bigger than the head of mama’s sewing 
machine. There are rows and rows of them, connected by belts with 
flying pulley wheels overhead, and operated by men and women. 
These machines are lathes. Lathes are used for shaping round things 
in metal as well as in wood and clay. Here the lathes cut teeth on 
little brass wheels and threads on the outside of screws and the inside 
of screw-holes. 


BROWNIE TICK-TOCK AND THE STARS 


327 


First, the round blanks for wheels are cut from strips of sheet 
brass. A brass ribbon as wide as the wheel is fed into a machine. 
A steam hammer with a die on the end as round and sharp-edged 
as a cooky cutter, comes down and cuts out little brass “cookies” 
that look like very thin, bright, telephone slugs. 

Watch wheels all have holes in the middle like some cookies, 
and teeth or scallops around the edges. The hole is drilled first, 
and‘a number of blanks are strung on a rod like flat beads on a string. 
Then the rod is clamped into a lathe. The operator slips a belt over 
the wheel—whir-r-r, how it hums! A steel chisel cuts a row of teeth 
up and down in all the blanks at once. Click, the rod turns a little 
and another tooth is cut. 

A screw-making lathe clips a tiny bit of brass wire from a coil, 
whirls it under a chisel to point one end, strikes a blow that flattens 
the other end into a head, and saws a slot across the head for the 
screwdriver. Then a fairy chisel cuts a thread-like spiral groove 
from near the head down to the tapering tip. When it is done it 
isn’t much bigger than a little brown seed. Hundreds of them can 
be put into a pill box, or a one-ounce bottle. 

In a watch factory are big fire-clay ovens, or kilns, as there are 
in potteries, for baking—what do you suppose? The white china 
dials. Some dials are gilded or plated with gold, but most of them 
are enamelled on copper plates with fine white porcelain from the 
pottery. The wet clay paste, or dough, is spread on the dial plate, 
baked in the oven, ground down smooth and glazed. When they 
come out of the oven they shine like frosted cakes. A pattern printed 
on a fine transfer paper is laid carefully on the dial and pasted smooth. 
Into the oven it goes again. The paper is burned up but the pattern 
is burned in. The dial of papa’s watch and your pretty china break¬ 
fast cup are decorated in much the same way. 

The most delicate parts of a watch are the springs—the main¬ 
spring and the hair-spring. They are tiny ribbons and hairs of blue 
steel, so flexible that they can be coiled up tight, but so strong they 
can pull the wheels along. They are made of steel wire, ironed or 
rolled out flat, tempered by heat and cold, “blued,” and with rivet 
holes bored in the ends. In a watch you can see the main spring 
beat and throb like a little live heart. 

Machines make all the parts of a watch more perfectly and 
hundreds of times faster than men could make them by hand. But 
no machine can put all the parts of a watch together. A skilled 


328 


BROWNIE TICK-TOCK AND THE STARS 


watchmaker, with a magnifying glass screwed into one eye, has to 
pick up the one hundred and fifty separate parts, some with magnets, 
and fit them all together into a compart circle that will slip right 
into a tiny gold shell of a case. And he has to do all this so the little 
machine will keep perfect time. No spring must be too short or too 
long, no screw too tight, no wheel or tooth must rub another. 

. When your watch runs down you ask someone the time, or you 
set it by a public clock. In watch factories every watch is set and 
regulated by the fixed stars. The sun is not the best time-keeper. 
It goes fast or slow, or it seems to do so. But the earth turns 
around and around in the same space of time, day after day. As 
it turns, certain fixed stars, or very distant suns that appear as stars, 
come into view at the same instant each night. In a big watch 
factory an astronomer has a telescope set so that these stars seem 
to pass across the lens. Really, watches are set by the earth we 
live upon. The hour-hand of a perfectly-timed watch goes twice 
around the dial in exactly the same time that it takes our dear old 
earth to turn over once on its axis. The heart of the big earth and 
the heart of the little watch beat together. 

Isn’t that very wonderful? And don’t you think Old Father 
Time ought to carry a little bunch of stars? 


GOOD HEALTH 


Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher. —Do you remember the 
first time you opened the old-fashioned text-book on “Anatomy, Physi¬ 
ology and Hygiene? ’ It began by enumerating the two hundred and 
eight bones of the human body, and showed them all in a cheerful picture 
of a skeleton. A year’s study left you with a dazed sense of how fear¬ 
fully and wonderfully you were made. But much of the knowledge was 
unpleasant and seemed of no practical use. The “Hygiene,” or instruc¬ 
tions on how to keep the body in health, was vague as to detail and was 
given little space in the back of the book next the index. Wasn’t this 
absurd ? 

Nowadays, in all lines of education, we are letting the horse pull 
the cart. In the very first year of school, in simple, good health talks, 
little children are told how to take care of the dear, rosy bodies they live 
in, so they can enjoy playing and working, eating and sleeping, and grow 
up into fine, strong men and women. Good health, you see, is a habit, 
and habits must be caught young. Little tots can understand why they 
should stand and sit straight, to give lung-bellows and engine-heart room; 
why they should breathe pure air, deep, and sleep with the window open; 
why they should bathe often, and keep the teeth clean, and not read by 
dim light, or sit with wet feet and clotfling. They can understand why 
they should eat a variety of food, slowly, and not overload the stomach, 
or never give the little food-mill a rest. 

Regard for personal health leads naturally into regard for the family 
and public health, and those are domestic sanitation, sociology and civics. 
Big words and big ideas for little folks, you think. But are they? We 
are all bound together. None of us can live alone, or be unaffected by 
the people and conditions around us. Any little child who “catches” the 
measles can understand the need of quarantine. Domestic sanitation is 
just good health housekeeping, and practical civics for most of us is just 
good public housekeeping. The health, street-cleaning, police and fire 
departments exist to protect the health, lives and property of all the 
people. They all come very close to our daily lives and concern us all. 
We can help in this public housekeeping, take a part in the government. 
If we fail to do so, are selfish, indifferent or lazy, we must suffer for it. 

It is astonishing how very early little children can be made to under¬ 
stand these things, and be brought into active relation with government; 
with a sense of duty toward the general public, and respect for the bless¬ 
ings of health, law and order in the community. In some large cities, 
school children are organized into brigades to help the officers keep clean 
alleys, and clear fire escapes. Little soldiers of peace they are, serving 
their country as patriotically as heroes of war. The schools understand 
now that children need education and experience in intelligent citizen¬ 
ship, as much as in arithmetic. 


329 



GOOD HEALTH 


I. YOUR OWN HEALTH 

You live in a little house all by yourself. You were born in it. 
¥bu will have to live in it all your life. It is your body. People * 
who own houses are proud of them. They take care of them, and 
try to live in them just as comfortably as they can. The first thing 
necessary to live comfortably anywhere, is to keep everything sweet 
and clean and in order. 

Your body has a framework of bones, as a house has of timbers. 
The muscles cover these bones as weather boards, lath and plaster 
cover the timbers. The skin is a sort of coat of paint to protect the 
house from the weather. Your body has a heart, that is a little heat¬ 
ing and pumping plant. It has all the tools in it for preparing food 
for use in the body. It has lungs for ventilating with fresh air. It 
has sewer pipes for getting rid of waste, and it has a network of 
little nerve wires to give warning of trouble, inside and out. It has 
windows to see through, and a telephone in the ear. 

It is much better to use a house than to let it stand idle. Things 
rust out quicker than they wear out. So it is with your body. You 
must use every bit of it, every day, and live in every corner of it. 
The bones and muscles become weak and stiff if they get no exercise. 
Working muscles and bones call for more blood. This compels the 
heart to beat faster and stronger, and the lungs to call for more air 
to keep the blood purified. All parts of the body should be exercised 
equally. Swimming, rowing, skating, bicycle riding, dancing, and 
just plain walking in the fresh air, are splendid exercises. Games, 
like base-ball, foot-ball, basket-ball and tennis are fine, too. They 
train both mind and body to think and act quickly. Sweeping a 
room, hoeing a garden and splitting kindling for mother, are good 
for the body, too. Laziness is rust for body and mind as well as for 
the hinges of a door. Don’t do anything half-way. Study hard, 
get your lesson and quit studying. Play hard and then rest. 

330 



YOUR OWN HEALTH 


331 


Next, “don’t worry!” You know care killed a cat, and cats 
are supposed to have nine lives. Don’t hurry, or over-work or over¬ 
play. Don’t lie awake and think about that examination. If you 
do your best every day you don’t need to worry; and if you don’t 
do your best worrying will make it worse. If your brain is to do 
good work it must have sleep. Eight hours for work, eight for eating 
and playing and eight for sleep is a good rule for grown people. Chil¬ 
dren need less work and more play and sleep. 

Eat at regular hours, but never eat unless you are hungry. 
Missing a meal gives an overworked stomach a chance to catch up. 
It needs rest as well as the muscles and brain. Eat enough at meal 
times and don’t “piece” between meals. It takes several hours to 
empty a stomach. Don’t eat anything “to keep it from spoiling.” 
It is better for food to spoil outside a stomach than inside. Don’t 
make a meal of one kind of food because you like it. A dinner all 
meat, potatoes and pie is too heavy for anyone but an ostrich. There 
are several kinds of food. One kind is mostly starch, such as bread 
potatoes, rice, etc. Then there are fat foods, as butter, cream, oil 
and fat meats. The third kind is lean meat, beans, eggs and cheese. 
Besides these we need green vegetables and fruits, for their water, 
sugar, acids and minerals. They help digest the heavier foods. A 
mixed diet is best for human beings. 

Take time to eat. Chew your food. Many grown people eat 
as if they had to catch trains. This is a greedy, unpleasant habit. 
Besides, it is harmful. In chewing, the mouth makes a liquid that 
the stomach needs for digestion. It is called saliva. Think of sugar 
and feel the saliva run into your mouth. Swallow it; don’t spit it 
out. Spitting is another bad American habit. It is not only dis¬ 
agreeable for other people to see, but it wastes saliva. If you eat 
too fast,The mouth hasn’t time to make enough of it. Besides, your 
teeth need exercise. The broad, grinding teeth in the back of the 
mouth usually decay first. We use them less than we do the front, 
cutting teeth. Don’t overeat. If you fill a furnace too full of coal 
you smother the fire. Doctors often have to be called to help people 
digest their Thanksgiving dinners. 

When you were rubbing yourself dry, after a bath, did you 
ever rub little rolls up on your skin? That was dead skin, dust, 
dried sweat and oil. An air-tight coating soon forms on the 
outside of the skin. Warm water, soap and scrubbing with a 
brush remove it. If not removed it injures your health and your 


332 


YOUR OWN HEALTH 


appearance, and it gives you an odor that is unpleasant to other 
people. 

To keep really clean and the skin healthy, a warm, full bath 
with soap and flesh brush should be taken twice a week. The hands 
and face are outside in all weathers, all the time, so you must get 
into the nooks and corners of ears, nose, knuckles and finger nails 
every day. The teeth must be brushed with powder after every 
meal, and the mouth rinsed. In a warm, moist mouth bits of food 
quickly decay. You cannot keep your little food grinders and cutters 
for seventy years unless you take care of them. Your hair must 
be shampooed as often as every ten days or two weeks. Hair collects 
dust and oil and perspiration, and dead skin on the scalp, too. 

The morning shower or plunge bath in cool water, and a brisk 
rubbing with a coarse towel, brings the blood to the skin and makes 
you feel warm and bright and active. It makes you feel sudden 
changes of temperature less, so you do not “take cold” so easily. 
Don’t forget the inside bath. Drink a lot of cool, pure water. Drink 
four to six glasses a day, and more as you grow older. Water washes 
through all the waste pipes of the body and cleans them. It is best 
to drink between meals, before breakfast and at bed-time. Water 
at meal times dilutes the food in the stomach too much. 

When they are filled with air, the lungs expand two inches or 
more. This is a sign that clothing should not be too tight. The 
lungs go down almost to the waist line. You should breathe deep 
as well as wide. You cannot do that if you wear a tight belt. Cloth¬ 
ing should be warm enough for the weather, but not so heavy that 
it tires you to carry it. The weight should hang from the shoulders, 
not from the hips. The shoulders were made to carry burdens. 
Weight on the hips and waist presses down the stomach, and all 
the organs below it. Don’t wear shoes in which you cannot wriggle 
your toes. Shoes for children should have straight, broad soles and 
low or spring heels. 

Don’t be afraid of fresh air. Use it all the time. There is plenty 
of it and it costs nothing. You wouldn’t want to wear a suit of 
second-hand clothing, would you? Your lungs do not like to breathe 
second-hand air. They need the oxygen that is in fresh air. (See 
Air.) A great many people seem to be afraid of night air. That 
is all the kind of air there is at night, so you have to take your choice 
between fresh night air and used night air. Doctors cure people 
with sick lungs by having them sleep out of doors. You can keep 


YOUR OWN HEALTH 


333 


your lungs well by Sleeping with the windows wide open. Use plenty 
of bed clothes to keep warm. If your head is cold don’t pull the bed 
clothes over it and breathe the same air over and over. Wear a 
flannel night cap. 

Fresh air never made anyone “catch cold.” But impure air, 
living in houses that are too warm and close, sitting in drafts when 
overheated, and sitting with wet clothing and feet, will often make 
you catch cold. Keep warm and dry, well-fed, clean, active and 
cheerful, drink pure water and breathe fresh air, and you will keep 
well. Don’t go where you know there is anything “catching.” 
People used to think all children had to have measles, mumps and 
whooping cough, and that these diseases were not serious. Now we 
know they are often serious, and that we may escape them. Scarlet 
fever and diphtheria are very dangerous. Don’t drink from a public 
drinking cup unless you first wash the cup thoroughly. Finally, 
don’t sit “humped up” in a chair, or at a school desk. Only camels 
are allowed to have humps. 

There are four things that doctors should attend to in children 
who are otherwise in good health. One is: A dentist should examine 
the teeth twice a year. Even the “baby” teeth should be kept 
clean and filled with cement. That will make them last longer, keep 
the stomach healthier, and make the second teeth stronger and 
better in every way. That saves money and pain, too. Second, 
human beings were meant to breathe through the nose. Little boys 
and girls who go about with their mouths open, do so because they 
cannot get enough air any other way. Little balls of flesh called 
ad'en-oids, grow in the air passage back of the nose. They must 
be taken out, or they will certainly make a great deal of trouble. 

If there are singing or buzzing noises in the ears, if the ears 
ache often or pus runs from them, or you cannot hear what people 
say to you easily, you should go to a special ear doctor. Often ear 
troubles in children are easily cured, but if you neglect the trouble 
you may become very deaf. Your ears are your telephones, so be 
sure they are in good working order. Often children in school are 
thought to be stupid when they are only hard of hearing. 

Your eyes are the windows of your soul. They should be clear 
and bright, for you cannot see through dim glass. If print blurs or 
spots dance before the eyes, if you cannot see without squinting, 
or know the face of a friend across the street, or if you often have a head-, 
ache after studying, when you feel well in other ways, you may need 


334 


YOUR OWN HEALTH 


to wear glasses. You can injure good eyes in several ways. You 
must not read very fine print long, or read by a dim light. The light 
should fall on the page or the work you are doing, not in your eyes. 
And it should not dazzle. If your eyes feel tired, rest them by bath¬ 
ing them in cold water, and closing them awhile. 

Do not try to “doctor” yourself. Good mothers know a great 
many things to help little boys and girls over small troubles. But 
if the trouble is something she doesn’t understand, it is best to see 
a doctor. Don’t take patent medicines. If you are so ill that you 
need medicine you don’t know the kind you need, nor how any kind 
will affect you. And a great many patent medicines have alcohol 
and dangerous drugs in them. 


THE FAMILY HEALTH 


335 


II. THE FAMILY HEALTH 

As each person has to live in his own little body house, so we 
all have to live with other people, in houses that have been built of 
wood or stone or brick. Some of these houses are very old, and were 
built before people knew as much about health rules as we do today. 
Some are newer, but were badly built. Still, we have to use them. 
Very few of us will ever be able to build a new house. Few of us 
have a very wide choice of the house we must live in. It seems more 
sensible for us to learn how to make the best of whatever house 
shelters the family. 

A family has the best chance to escape sickness when every 
member of it has good habits of eating, bathing, sleeping, working 
and playing. Then the house must be kept clean from cellar to 
roof. The basement should be light and dry and airy. No decaying 
vegetables or fruits should be left in it, for these poison the air of 
the living rooms above. It should be built of stone and cement. 
Once a year the walls should be cleaned and whitewashed. The 
living rooms should be cleaned twice a year, and the walls calcimined 
or painted once. If the walls are papered, the paper should be 
cleaned. New paper should not be put on over old. Hard wood 
floors, with small rugs, are the best floor covering. Rugs can be taken 
out of doors often, and the floors washed. Iron or brass beds are 
cleaner than wood. Window draperies and all bedding should be 
washable. Carpet sweepers and soft cloths should be used. Brooms 
and feather dusters scatter dust. 

You know you need to drink water to wash out the waste pipes 
of your body. The waste pipes of houses become foul with decaying 
matter. They must be flushed every week with enough boiling 
water and washing soda, or even chloride of lime, to cut all dirt out. 
This must be done in kitchen sinks, laundry tubs, bath room plumb¬ 
ing and ice boxes. Plumbing should be open, so you can see the 
pipes. Sunlight and soap are great purifiers, so plumbing should 
never be boxed in. People are often poisoned by sewer gas or foul 
air from old, dirty, boxed-in plumbing, or even from new, cheap 
plumbing. You cannot smell sewer gas and that makes it all the more 
dangerous. Sometimes the plumbing in a house cannot be made 
safe. It has to be taken out altogether. In renting a house the 


THE FAMILY HEALTH 


330 

plumbing, the basement, the gas fixtures, the water supply and the 
heating plant are the really important things. A leak in a roof is 
a slight matter beside a leak in the plumbing. 

Stale food should not be allowed in pantries and ice boxes. 
Kitchen waste—garbage—should be destroyed every day, or carried 
away. There should not be a crumb of bread or sugar to coax flies 
in. Cut bread and other food on newspapers and roll them up. 
Flies forget to wipe their little feet, and they bring typhoid fever 
and other diseases into the house. So doors and windows should be 
screened. Food should be fresh. Flour and many dry foods may be 
kept for months in dry storerooms. If unfit for use they smell moldy. 
Meat, butter, eggs and milk warn us of decay through our noses, 
too. Wilted green vegetables should be crisped in cold water. Fruit 
that cannot be eaten fresh, should be preserved by cooking. 

A family should be sure the drinking water is pure. Spring 
water is the best and purest of all. In cities, water is supplied to 
all the people from reservoirs fed by springs or rivers, or from a 
lake. Sometimes it is necessary to filter or boil the water. Boiled 
water should be cooled and air put back into it by pouring it from 
one vessel to another several times. This must be done because 
boiled water tastes “flat.” It is not unhealthful, but people care 
so little for it that they will not drink enough. Air in water 
makes it sparkle. Spring water, in gushing out of the ground, 
takes up a great deal of air. 

Heat is the next important thing. You do not want a hot¬ 
house. Hot-houses are useful for growing delicate plants. Hot 
dwelling houses grow delicate people. The temperature of a house 
should be 68 or 70 degrees by a thermometer hung in the middle 
of the room. And it should be an even temperature, not 85 for a 
little while and then 60. So the fireman of the family should study 
the heating plant. The house may be heated by stoves, or by a hot¬ 
air, steam, or hot-water furnace. Different stoves and furnaces take 
different kinds of fuel, and different ways of managing them to get 
the best work from them at the least cost. Sometimes badly managed 
furnaces give off a poisonous gas that makes people ill. If the drafts 
are used properly, coal gases will go up the chimney. 

Once in awhile you read about people being killed while asleep, 
with gas that escaped from a stove, a furnace, or a gas jet. This 
could not happen to people who sleep with the windows open, for 
the gas would go out of doors, but enough might collect in a well- 


THE FAMILY HEALTH 


337 


ventilated house to make sleepers ill. No coal gas should escape 
from a furnace or stove, and gas pipes and burner keys should be 
tested often. Don’t test them with a match, if you suspect a leak. 
Your nose is safer and just as reliable. You can always smell escap¬ 
ing gas. If you can’t find the leak that way, send for a plumber. 
The leak may be from a pipe in a wall, or under a floor. A neglected 
leakage of gas may not only cause sickness, but also an explosion 
and fire. 

Ventilation should be studied. Every house has windows and 
doors. Most of them have transoms over the doors. A few have 
fireplaces. Fireplaces are the best ventilators, even when there is 
no fire in them, for bad air is drawn up the chimney. A window, 
lowered from the top a few inches in cold weather, lets fresh air in 
between the sashes, and the bad air out above. 

The time we need to be most careful about ventilation is in the 
winter. On cold winter evenings the family likes to sit in the cosy 
living room, warmed by the steam radiator or base burner stove. 
Two or three gas jets burn for reading or sewing. Fire and people 
use up the oxygen in the air very fast (see Air) and make carbon 
dioxide. In an hour or two the oxygen supply in the room gets too 
low for comfort, and the carbon dioxide too high. 

Look for these danger signals: Father begins to yawn. The 
lights do not burn so bright. Big brother feels dull and can’t do his 
arithmetic. Sweet tempered sister gets cross. The only bright and 
happy person in the room is the baby on the floor. The baby has 
the best air of all because warm, used air goes up. But even the 
baby cries after awhile; the canary bird nearly tumbles off its perch 
and mother has a headache. The bad air almost fills the room. No 
one knows what is the matter. It’s lucky if some one comes in from 
outside and says: “My, but it’s stuffy in here.” A window is opened 
and everyone brightens. 

The next time that happens in your family, test the air in the 
room. Bring in a small glass jar of water and a bottle of lime water. 
Pour the water out of the jar and let it stand a few minutes to fill 
with the air in the room. Then pour a half inch of lime water in the 
jar and shake it hard to mix the air and water. If there is too much 
carbon dioxide in the room the water will turn chalky. The remedy 
is fresh air. Air as bad as that ought to be turned out of doors. 

Every family should have a few simple “first aids for the 
injured” in the house, and know how to use them. A cut, a burn, 


338 


THE FAMILY HEALTH 


a bruise, a bumped head or a bleeding nose, should be attended to 
without calling a doctor. Slight ailments, too, can be managed. 
Any family doctor, for the usual office visit fee, will tell you what 
things to keep on hand and how to use them. Better still, there 
are little books written by,doctors telling “What to Do in Emer¬ 
gencies.” Some of them cost only fifty cents, and can be kept in 
the medicine closet. * 

A house should be orderly, quiet and cheerful. Mother works 
hard to keep everything clean and in place. You know it is bad 
for anyone to overwork. Most families thoughtlessly overwork the 
mother by throwing things around, and bringing dirt into the house. 
Perhaps that is why she is cross sometimes. She is not only over¬ 
worked, she is worried because the work is never done. If it isn’t 
good for you to lie awake and worry over examinations, it isn’t good 
for mother to worry about how much extra work she has to do 
tomorrow. 

Loud noises really hurt many people. Nerves need rest as well 
as bones and muscles, brains and stomachs. In cities, street cars 
and railroad trains, factory whistles and wagons and noisy crowds 
are always hammering at people’s nerves. Homes are the places to 
rest nerves. So don’t slam doors or scrape your chair legs on the 
floor, or throw your shoes across the room, or shout to someone 
upstairs. You may yell on a hundred-acre farm, or at a baseball 
game where everyone else is yelling. Very good people often quarrel 
and cry about little things, because their nerves are tormented all 
the time. Watch these danger signals. Sick nerves take a long, 
hard time to cure. 

Finally, don’t take all your troubles into the house to talk over. 
Long ago a great poet said: “A merry heart goes all the day, a sad 
tires in a mile-a.” This is just as true as that two times two are 
four. Laugh and grow fat, and save doctor bills. Laughing exercises 
the lungs; sour thoughts sour on the stomach. Bring all the cheerful 
things, the pleasant things, the funny things you come across, into 
the house. No family is as healthy as it might be unless it is happy. 


SOLDIERS OF PEACE 


I. FIGHTERS FOR EVERYBODY’S HEALTH 

In the story about America’s “Front Door” you learned that 
United States health officers meet every ship that enters an American 
harbor. If there is one case of yellow fever, smallpox or bubonic 
plague on board, the ship must wait outside long enough to see if 
other people on board are affected. The sick person must be removed 
to a pest-house and the ship disinfected. This is called going into 
quarantine. If certain dreadful diseases were allowed to come into 
our country, they might run across it like a prairie' fire *ncL cause 
thousands of people suffering and death. Sometimes our seaports 
are closed to ships coming from foreign cities where these diseases 
exist. Rats are known to carry them as well as people, so warfare 
is waged against wharf rats. Foreign emigrant people are not allowed 
to come into our country at all if they have tuberculosis, or contagious 
diseases of the eyes and skin. There are pure food laws to stop unfit 
food from coming into the country, or from being shipped from one 
state to another. 

The health officers of states take up the work of protecting the 
people where the government leaves off. A state may quarantine 
against another state or city, that is, it may refuse to allow trains 
and boats to come from them if certain contagious diseases become 
very bad. States compel doctors to report contagious diseases, and 
make people who have smallpox, scarlet fever, or diphtheria put 
cards on their houses and obey quarantine laws. Children with 
measles, mumps, whooping cough and chickenpox cannot go to 
school. States inspect factories to see that workers are not over¬ 
crowded, that guards are put on machines to prevent accidents, that 
good light and air is supplied, and that children under a certain age 
are not at work for wages. States have pure food laws, too, to punish 
people who make or sell unfit food in the state. In one city, not 
long ago, many barrels of dirty sugar were seized. The sugar was 
sweepings from sugar refineries. It was sold to candy makers. There 



340 


FIGHTERS FOR EVERYBODY’S HEALTH 


were disease germs in that sugar. Don’t you think men who would 
sell such sugar, and men who would buy and make candy with it 
should be sent to prison? 

In cities, a great deal more has to be done to protect the health 
of the people. Dirt is a disease breeder. Dirt, you know, is not 
just black earth. It is matter out of place. Mud is a fine thing in 
a rice field, but it is dirt on a little boy’s face. So, kitchen refuse is 
garbage in a house, but it is good food in a chicken yard and pig 
pen. Old boxes and newspapers litter a house, but are fine for 
kindling fires. Sewage water and stable soil poison people, but make 
plants in a field grow. Tin cans, old iron, old shoes, rags, bottles 
and bones can be made over into useful things in factories, and junk 
men will often give country children bright new pennies for saving 
them. If they cannot be sold they can be buried and, with ashes, 
used to fill in holes. On farms, and even in towns, where homes 
have large lots, each family can use or destroy its waste. 

In cities, people have no gardens^or chickens or pigs. Very often 
they burn gas for cooking, and cannot use up kindling. Bonfires in 
narrow alleys and on streets are dangerous, and destroy pavements. 
There must be good public housekeeping to take care of all the waste 
of all the people, or there would be dirt, disorder and sickness that 
the cleanest person and the cleanest family could not avoid. 

Public housekeeping in cities begins at street gutters and back 
gates. It is just like family housekeeping on a big scale. A family 
has a waste paper basket, a slop pail, a rag bag and an ash can, and 
does not allow members of the family to mix different kinds of waste, 
or to scatter trash. The streets and alleys are everybody’s floor. 
Everybody has to pay the city a little in taxes to keep the public 
floor clean, and to carry away, destroy or use the waste. Everyone 
is expected to help in this work, by following the same sensible rules 
that orderly families make for themselves. 

In the alley behind each house there must be covered iron gar¬ 
bage and ash cans. These are collected in separate wagons. Other 
wagons take away junk. Ashes and street sweepings are used for 
filling in low ground. In this way green parks have been made on 
swamps. Bones are sold to factories, to be ground into bone meal. 
One factory buys old iron and other metals. Another takes old 
shoes, another the wooden boxes and furniture. Rags and paper 
go to a paper mill. Garbage is burned in great furnaces that often 
save the fat for soap factories. London, in its poorest part, burns 


FIGHTERS FOR EVERYBODY’S HEALTH 


341 


garbage to heat water for public baths, and to make steam to run 
the machinery of laundries. 

Well managed cities take all this waste away every day, or at 
least three times a week, and they do it early in the morning. Street 
sweeping is done at night when there are few people about. Then 
big, rotary sweepers, drawn by horses, whirl the street soil up into 
covered wagon boxes. In the day time, men go over the streets with 
long-handled brush brooms, dust pans and carts and water cans. 
They work all the time. Horses make soil, produce wagons and 
peddlers drop vegetables and fruits, coal wagons scatter lumps and 
dust, untidy people throw away papers, fruit skins and cigar stumps. 
Sometimes streets have to be scraped. Asphalt and cement walks 
and roadways are washed with a big hose. In Paris, miles of beautiful 
avenues are washed every morning before breakfast. The water 
carries the dust into the sewers. In most cities street car companies 
must keep the streets on which their tracks run, clean. They must 
sprinkle the tracks in summer to lay the dust, and clear away snow 
in the winter. The city sprinkles the roadways of the parks and 
boulevards, and waters the grass. House owners, on well-kept streets, 
pay for having sprinkling done. 

Snow is one of the hardest things in a city to deal with. It 
cannot be allowed to lie on the ground as in the country, where it 
packs into hard, white roads. In cities snow is soon cut up into dirty 
slush, freezes into ruts and blocks the streets. In the crowded busi¬ 
ness parts, snow must be shovelled into wagons and carried away. 
Snow plows and scrapers go over avenues and through parks. A 
heavy snowfall costs a city thousands of dollars. Besides its stopping 
traffic, if it should melt all at once it would flood basements and 
sewers. That would force sewage into the streets and houses, and 
poison the people. 

Street cleaning is only a part of city housekeeping. The health 
department’s business is to see that all the people have pure air, 
pure water, pure food, and are protected from contagious diseases. 
The people pay taxes to build water works, and then pay for all 
the water they use. They pay taxes to lay sewer pipes. Gas com¬ 
panies are given the right to lay gas pipes in the streets. They make 
money from this right, so they have to obey special laws. Owners 
of houses, stores and factories, get rent from the people who use 
them, so they are forced by law to keep their property in good, 
healthful order. 


342 


FIGHTERS FOR EVERYBODY S HEALTH 


The health office must warn people by public notice if, at any 
time, water should be boiled. If your plumbing or gas pipes are 
out of order, a city inspector will come for nothing to test them, 
and house owners must repair the pipes, or even tear them out and 
put new ones in, if necessary. If they refuse to do this the health 
office has the right to condemn a building, to allow no one to use 
it, or even to order it torn down. The law in most cities says that 
no man has any rights in property, above the rights of public health. 
If there is a dirty stable or factory near you that breeds flies, the 
health officers will see that the place is cleaned, for flies carry dis¬ 
ease. City inspectors watch bakeries, markets, dairies, cold-storage 
houses and commission houses, to see that no spoiled food is sold. 

A well managed city forbids many things that cause accidents. 
They make speed laws for automobiles, railway trains and street 
cars. Merchants cannot hang swinging signs over sidewalks, or use 
the walks for boxes and barrels. People who are putting up tall, 
new buildings must put wooden sheds over the walks to catch falling 
bricks, bolts and plaster. Street cars must have fenders to catch 
people who may fall in front of them, and they are allowed to stop 
only in certain places, so people will always know what a car is going 
to do. When a street is being repaired, a hole must be enclosed at 
night, and a red light hung above. Theaters cannot crowd the aisles, 
and must mark exits in big letters and with red lights. In a number 
of cities, railroads are elevated. Even with all the things that are 
done to protect people, every city has thousands of accidents a year 
by which people are injured or killed. Many of them are caused by 
carelessness. One good thing to remember is, that there is more 
room behind a moving car than there is in front. Another is that 
a city street is not a safe playground for a child. 

It really seems as if cities are more careful of children than many 
parents are. Many city health departments print little books telling 
mothers how to feed babies in the hot summer months, when so many 
babies die. The laws about milk are very strict, for milk is the only 
food of helpless babies and many sick people. Cities often have 
fresh air sanitariums in parks for sick babies, and bathing beaches 
for older people. 

Within the last few'years, big city school boards have hired school 
doctors, and visiting nurses, who work with the health department 
to keep school children well. These doctors examine children’s eyes, 
ears, noses, throats, teeth and skin. They watch for contagious 


FIGHTERS FOR EVERYBODY’S HEALTH 


343 


diseases and keep them from spreading, and they find and cure many 
children who are in the early stages of tuberculosis. They tell parents 
what to do for sick children. If the parents are too poor to pay 
for glasses, for dental work, for removing ad'en-oids from noses, or 
for any other trouble, the children can be treated at free dispensaries 
and hospitals. Every city has public hospitals supported by taxes, 
to take care of poor sick people. There are special wards for con¬ 
tagious diseases, and cities are beginning to build camp hospitals 
and sanitariums for people with tuberculosis. 

One of the things that all cities and most towns do now, is to 
forbid spitting in public places. This is a filthy habit, very offensive 
to clean people. And now it cannot be allowed at all, because tuber¬ 
culosis, “the great white plague,” that kills so many thousands of 
people, is known to be spread by spitting. Signs forbidding it, and 
warning people that they will be fined, if caught, are put up in street 
cars and public places. People are warned, too, not to use public 
drinking cups without washing them thoroughly. The only safe cup 
to use is your own, or one set in a fountain basin with water over¬ 
flowing it all the time. 

After a child is reported well of scarlet fever or other contagious 
diseases by a doctor, city health officers come and disinfect the house. 
To disinfect is to kill the disease germs. They do this by filling the 
house with fumes of for-mal'de-hyde. Clothes that can be washed 
must be boiled. Rugs, mattresses and bedding are taken away to 
the city’s plant to be disinfected and returned. Then the warning 
card is taken down, and the family may mingle with other people. 

You know how you like to be “head” in school—to be the best 
in everything. Cities like to be “head” in health. They keep records 
of the babies born, the number and ages of people who die in a year, 
and the diseases they die of. If a great number of deaths are from 
preventable accidents, or diseases caused by contagion, bad water, 
bad food, or bad drainage through sewers, a city is very much ashamed. 
Besides, a city with a low health record is not a good place to live 
in, so people who move from one city to another avoid it. Cities are 
rivals for people and trade. They all try to go “up head,” in health. 
To get there takes an army of street cleaners and inspectors and 
officers. The work is hard and dirty, and often dangerous, and it 
is never done. The good-health brigade is always on duty, standing 
sentinel, cleaning camp, scouting for the enemy, and fighting the 
foes of dirt, disorder and disease. They are soldiers of peace. 


344 


FIRE FIGHTERS 


II. FIRE FIGHTERS 

Do you have fire drills in your school? If you do, the fire signal 
is struck on the gong at the most unexpected times. That is the 
way a fire happens, you know. When the gong strikes, every child 
jumps into line. Coats and hats and books are left behind. Chil¬ 
dren start from three floors at once in a big city school, going four 
abreast down wide, shallow stairways. By the time those on the 
second floor are down to the first, the little tots are out of doors. 
A big building of twenty-four rooms, and nearly twelve hundred 
pupils, on three floors, can be emptied in one minute and a half. It 
would take a racing fire to beat that, wouldn’t it? 

If you don’t have a fire drill, you should have. Some day there 
really might be a fire, and then the children wouldn’t know how to 
get out quickly and safely. Frightened children, and even grown 
people, run and scream and stumble. They knock other people down 
and fall over them. There was one such school fire, in which hundreds 
of children died. We never want another one. There was a dreadful 
theater fire, and one on an excursion boat. In all these fires, laws 
had been disobeyed. By these terrible fires we learned a great many 
things that we should never forget. 

New buildings for schools and for public use should be made 
fireproof, but old buildings can be made much safer than they are. 
Every father and mother should know if a child goes to school in 
a safe building The doors should open outward with a push, and 
should never be locked in school hours. The stairs should be wide, 
and shallow, and the treads laid on iron or cement. If a school house 
is two stories high there should be iron fire escapes from halls, marked 
in big letters, and with a red light that can be seen through smoke. 
The basement floor should be of cement, and there should be no 
rubbish closets for the janitor, under stairways. Hot ashes should 
never be near wood. Chimneys should be examined and cleaned 
every year. The furnace should be in a separate building, if possible. 
And there should be frequent fire drills. 

The United States has the best fire fighters in the world. We 
have the best trained and most daring firemen. We have the best 
engines and horses, hose and ladders and the best water supply. 
Foreign countries send men to our cities to see our fire companies 



AN ENGINE RACING TO A FIRE IN ANSWER TO AN ALARM CALL. 



PUTTING OUT A FIRE. 

Firemendrag the hose up long ladders to reach the upper stories. To reach high buildings, hose is 
attached to the top of the tower, as seen on the engine at the right. Sky-scrapers 
have standpipes running from the ground through the floors to the top 
through which water is forced. 
























CLEARING THE STREETS AFTER A HEAVY FALL OF SNOW. 

The snow is loaded into carts and motor trucks and carried away. 



Photo, Brown Bros. 


HOUSEKEEPERS ARE REQUIRED TO PUT THEIR GARBAGE INTO CANS. 

Here the city employes are gathering these cans and loading the contents into carts to be taken 

to the dump. 















FIRE FIGHTERS 


345 


put out fires. Isn’t it strange, then, that more lives and more property 
are lost by fires, in our country, than in England or Germany or France? 
We pay out more money for fire insurance, too. This is partly because 
ours is a newer country, and much of our building has been done 
with wood. We are building better, today. But most of our fires 
are caused by carelessness. The best way to deal with a fire is not 
to let one get started. Here are some of the things to remember: 

Never drop a match. Even if it is unlighted, some one may 
step on it and set it on fire. Keep matches in covered metal or china 
boxes, away from children and mice. Mice bite match heads and 
often set whole boxes on fire. Be careful of fire crackers. They often 
explode in rubbish, under wooden steps and ladies’ dresses. Don’t 
build a bonfire, or play around one, unless some grown person is 
watching. Don’t leave little children alone in a house or a room, 
with a fire or a lighted lamp. If you build a camp fire anywhere be 
sure it is out, not a hot coal left in the ashes, before you leave it. 
Forest and prairie fires that have swept away towns have been started 
that way. Don’t allow loose rubbish in basements and closets. Don’t 
use gasoline, kerosene, naphtha, benzine, alcohol or turpentine in a 
room with a fire, or keep these things stored in a house. Don’t try 
to start a fire with one of these things, or to fill a stove tank or lamp 
while it is burning. There are easier ways to die than by oil explosions. 

Use a deep kettle, only partly full of boiling fat, for frying 
doughnuts. Don’t force your, furnace in cold weather. Overheated 
chimneys cause fire. Test your gas pipes and burners often, and 
don’t look for a gas leak with a lighted match. If you can’t find it 
with your nose, send for a plumber. Don’t light lamps or gas jets 
near lace curtains. Watch a grate fire, or put a fender before it. Coal 
snaps out sometimes. Be careful of punk £,nd incense sticks. Don’t 
put candles on a Christmas tree. They look pretty, but they are 
dangerous. Maybe you can think of some more don’ts. Yes, here 
is another. Don’t air bed clothes, or put flower pots on the fire escape. 
It may be needed any minute. Besides, it is against the law to block 
a fire escape, and you could be punished for it. Here are some “dos” 
to remember about fire. 

When you move into a new neighborhood, find out the nearest 
fire alarm box, the first thing. It will be painted red, and have a red 
light above it at night. Ask a policeman how to send in an alarm. 
If you have a telephone, put down the number of the nearest engine 
house and police station, so you can call for help, if you can’t get 


346 


FIRE FIGHTERS 


out of a burning house. Study all the possible ways of getting out 
of a house. If it is a tenement or apartment building, with a fire 
escape, see if the escape is kept clear. If other tenants block up the 
escape, tell a policeman and have it stopped. See if the school is 
safe, and has fire drills. If not, refuse to send your children into a 
fire-trap, and arouse public feeling about it, so the school will be 
made safe. 

When you go to a theater, public hall, church gallery, depart¬ 
ment store or factory, mark the EXIT and the red light nearest 
you. If a fire starts make your way out quietly. Don’t scream or 
push in a crowd. A panic is easily started, and more people are 
killed by falling and being trodden on than by the fire. Talk cheer¬ 
fully to people near you. Tell them how quickly a big school house 
is emptied in a fire drill. Help old people and children. If you are 
stopping in a hotel, locate the stairways, the elevator and the fire 
escape from your room. If there isn’t a coil of stout rope in your 
room, long enough to reach the ground, ask the clerk for one. 

A small fire can be smothered. You know fire cannot burn 
without air. If your clothing catches fire, roll up in a rug or heavy 
bed clothes. If out of doors roll on the ground. A boy’s or man’s 
thick coat will often put out a small fire. Pull a blazing curtain down 
and smother the flame. Throw a mattress on a burning floor. If 
you are caught in a burning house get out, if you can, without going 
through flames and smoke. When air is full of smoke the oxygen 
is burned out, so it can not be breathed. That is why people fall 
and are killed by smoke, e\en when the flame does not touch them. 
The best air is always near the floor, so you would better crawl. If 
you cannot get out, close the doors between you and the fire, go to 
a window, open it and stand there and scream for help. Then wait 
for the firemen. Don’t jump. You can lower yourself from a second 
or even third story window, by a rope made by tearing sheets in wide 
strips, knotting them together and tying one end to a bed post. 
You can let a child down by such a rope. 

Do you know how quickly a fire company can get to a fire? You 
ought to be in a city engine house sometime at midnight, when an 
alarm is turned in. It’s like a cavalry charge on a battle field. A 
man sits at a desk under a gas jet. Another man is reading. This 
is the night watch. The big engine’s shining brass trimmings wink 
in the light. The horses stand with drooping heads in the stalls. 
The harnesses hang from the ceiling, above the engine pole. Over- 


FIRE FIGHTERS 


347 


head, the firemen are asleep, half-dressed, in a big room full of cot 
beds. Stout poles set in big rubber pads go up through manholes 
to the upper floor. You wonder what these are for. 

Suddenly the brass gong strikes four-two-one. That is the “ for¬ 
ward charge!” for that engine house. “Turn out,” yells the man 
at the desk. But everyone has turned out. The firemen drop through 
those holes and slide down the poles. They button their coats as 
they run. The touch of an electric button unhitches the horses and 
they leap in front of the engine. The driver springs to the seat and 
gathers up the reins. That act drops the harness from the ceiling 
to the horses’ backs. Snap, snap, snap, go the harness buckles, under 
a dozen pairs of hands. The night watch thrusts a torch into the 
fire, under the engine boiler. Men spring to the hose tender, slipping 
into rubber coats and helmets as they jump. 

With a pounding of hoofs, the big percheron horses are off. 
Smoke already comes from the stack. Clang, clang, rings the bell. 
Clear the streets, get out of the way! The desk sergeant has shouted 
the number of the box the alarm came from, and the engine makes 
straight for that corner. The person who sent in the alarm, or a 
policeman who stands there, tells the fire crew where the fire is. 
In two minutes from the alarm, the hose is screwed to a water hydrant 
six blocks from the engine house and the engine is pumping water 
into the burning building. 

The first thing to be saved in a fire is life, the second property. 
A hook and ladder truck is there as soon as the engine. Firemen 
run up stairways and ladders to find people. They knock at doors 
and shout to people to answer them. If they hear a scream or a 
moan, they break down doors and go right through flame and smoke 
to carry people out. 

One fireman can bring down four people at once on a long shaking 
ladder. He can hook two children to his belt, and bring a mother 
and baby on one arm. Back he goes into the flames. This time it 
is a two-hundred pound man, overcome with smoke, that he brings 
down. Firemen creep along dizzy window ledges, where you would 
not think a cat could go. They climb on roofs and drop through 
skylights. They make bridges across alleys and courts with ladders; 
they hang over roof cornices. Firemen every day do deeds of daring 
that you would think impossible. 

Every day these brave fire fighters are killed, or injured for life. 
Burning shutters, cornices and awnings fall upon them. Sometimes 


348 


FIRE FIGHTERS 


a roof falls in with them, or an explosion blows a building up. In 
winter the water freezes as it falls on them. After one fire, the boots 
and gloves of the firemen were frozen on them and had to be cut off. 
Sometimes a fire company has to stay out thirty-six hours. Fire¬ 
men never leave a spark, as careless campers often do, to start a 
new fire. 

No matter how long they have been out fighting a fire, when 
they get back to the engine house the horses must be rubbed down, 
fed and watered, the engine must be cleaned, the fire raked from 
under the boilers and another fire laid ready for instant lighting. 
Only then can they bathe and eat and go to bed. 

They go to bed to sleep with one ear open for the alarm. Day 
and night firemen are sentinels on duty, always ready to spring at 
the enemy. They are always ready to risk their lives to save the 
lives of others. Many cities pension their injured and worn out 
firemen, just as our country pensions soldiers. Don’t you think all 
good citizens should be careful not to let fires get started? Even 
little boys and girls can be that kind of fire fighters. 


FIGHTERS FOR LAW AND ORDER 


340 


III. FIGHTERS FOR LAW AND ORDER 

When you grow older you will study the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence. This is a paper that was signed by some heroes who 
started our United States. They wanted a country where every¬ 
body could be free and happy. So the very first thing they put 
into that paper was that every person has a right to life, liberty 
and happiness. The Declaration of Independence is America’s 
Golden Rule. Every one who lives here may live where and how 
he likes, go about freely and enjoy himself in his own way, so long 
as he doesn't interfere with other people’s rights. That satisfies 
most persons, but there are selfish and even wicked people who want 
more than their rights. To get what they want, they do not care 
how much trouble and pain and loss they make for others. So we 
have to have laws, telling people what they are not allowed to do, 
and officers to make people obey those laws. 

Laws are just rules for good behavior. You know how unhappy 
one selfish, ill-tempered person can make a whole family. It is the 
same in school. One unruly pupil can make trouble for a whole 
room. One boy who is a “bully” on the playground, can spoil every¬ 
body’s fun. Little law-breakers become big law-breakers when they 
grow up. Then they find out that if they interfere with other people’s 
life, liberty and happiness, officers of the law will arrest and punish 
them. It is better to learn to be good citizens in the home and 
school, so it will be easier to obey laws when you grow up 

If you live in even a small village, very likely you have a town 
marshal. He tells boys they must not throw stones or snow balls 
in the streets for they might break windows, or hit people or frighten 
horses into running away. He tells them not to build bonfires in 
the streets, or near fences and barns along alleys. He tells them 
not to climb shade trees or fruit trees without the owner’s permis¬ 
sion, for they might break limbs. He tells them they must not chase 
cats, or tie tin cans to dogs’ tails, or rob birds’ nests, or use sling 
stones on birds. The law forbids cruelty to helpless animals. You 
see, all these laws are just good common sense and kindness. 

In small places, very few people break laws because everybody 
knows everybody else, and a selfish, troublesome person soon gets 
himself disliked and goes away. He is apt to go to a big city. He 


350 


FIGHTERS FOR LAW AND ORDER 


thinks where there are so many people he will not be noticed, and he 
can do as he pleases. But there he finds a whole army of policemen 
whose business it is to keep order. Policemen are the friends and 
protectors of everyone who behaves well, and the enemies of every¬ 
one who makes trouble for others. 

Policemen always look out for children. Some school houses 
in cities are on crowded street corners, where street cars, wagons 
and automobiles are always passing. Often the children have to 
cross railroad tracks to get to school. In such dangerous places there 
is always a policeman, in a blue uniform and brass buttons, to help 
the children across. When he lifts his stick or his hand, every car or 
wagon driver has to stop. He can arrest a man who disobeys him. 
Very likely he has little ones of his own at home. Very often he 
picks up a little first grader who is afraid, and carries her across the 
street. If a policeman finds a lost child on the street, he calls a police 
wagon and gives the baby a fine ride to the station house. There 
he is fed and petted and put to sleep. Then the policeman goes 
to find the baby’s mama and papa. A policeman is the best strange 
friend a little boy and girl can have. You see, he is a peace soldier. 
It is his business to take care of people. 

Policemen are often in as great danger as firemen. Sometimes 
they beat the firemen to a fire. If they do, it is their duty to go into 
a burning house and help get people out. They often stop runaway 
horses, and they snatch people from under horses’ hoofs and car 
wheels. They dive into park lagoons, into rivers and harbors to save 
people from drowning. The most dangerous work policemen have 
to do is to find and arrest criminals. Many of these men, who live 
by robbing people and houses, will kill rather than be captured and 
sent to prison. But policemen will answer a shout for help, a wdfistle 
or a telephone call. They will go right into dark basements and 
alleys, after men w r ho may be waiting for them with pistols and knives. 
Plain clothes policemen are in every big crowd watching for pick¬ 
pockets, and in dangerous parts of the city where criminals try to 
hide, learning to know their faces and their habits. 

The very tallest, strongest policemen stand in the middle of 
two crossing streets in the most crowded part of the city. They 
can see all four corners and crossings, can guard people who are 
afoot, and keep the wagons and cars from getting in a tangle. They 
can stop a stream of traffic by lifting a hand, and send it on again. 
Some policemen are mounted on horses or bicycles. These are in 


FIGHTERS FOR LAW AND ORDER 


351 


parks and along speed-ways, to stop automobiles and horses that are 
going too fast. There are special policemen who watch railway 
stations and boat docks, where visitors who do not know city ways 
are likely to get into trouble. There are always a great number 
along the line of procession, at fairs and celebrations, and where there 
are labor strikes. 

The policeman you know the best is the patrolman. Patrol 
is a soldier word. It means to walk over and guard a district. A 
police patrolman has several blocks to watch. He goes over his dis¬ 
trict several times a day. At night, another man takes his place. 
The patrolman has to see that no law is broken, and that everyone 
is protected. Some night, when you are asleep, there may come 
a ring at the doorbell. A policeman calls up that he found a base¬ 
ment window unlocked. He goes through the place to see if some 
burglar has broken in. No, he says, you were careless and left that 
window open. Your father thanks the policeman. And that makes 
you all the more careful afterwards. 

A policeman must see that people obey the health and street 
cleaning laws. He must stop fights and scatter noisy crowds. He 
must make people keep things off fire escapes. He must arrest any 
one whom he finds abusing a child or an animal. He must take care 
of any person injured on the street, send him home or to a hospital, 
and arrest any one who is to blame for the injury. If a man is out 
of money, and has no place to sleep and eat, he can always go to a 
police station. That is a safe, public lodging house for a night. 

Always answer a policeman’s questions and obey his orders. 
He is an officer of the law and he has a right to stop and question 
people. He has a right to your help, if he needs it. Sometimes 
boys have clubs or “gangs,” just for fun. Policemen are apt to 
watch “gangs,” for they know that crowds of boys often do selfish 
and mischievous things. But don’t look upon them as enemies. Be 
open and above board, and don’t hide or try to play tricks. Active 
boys can help a patrolman keep order in his district, for they see 
everything that is‘going on. In some cities boys have formed law- 
and-order clubs, and have been given badges to wear by the Chief 
of Police. Districts that have a band of little citizens helping the 
police are always cleaner and more orderly, and are shunned by 
sneak thieves and mobs. Some boys in such clubs have won medals 
for bravery in fires and for protecting animals that were being abused. 

There’s a lot of fun in being a little law-and-order soldier. Try it. 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


Editors’ Note to Mother and Teacher. —There is a period in a 
little child’s life when he is just an animated question mark. He wants 
to know the how and why of everything. Now this betrays a very large 
and useful curiosity. Curiosity, persisted in and intelligently directed, 
has made all of the great discoveries of the world. You can discourage 
it if you keep on answering: “Oh, just because it is,” or: “Run away 
now, and don’t bother me.” But stop and think if you really do want 
to nip that beautiful flower of the soul in the bud. Until long after he 
can read in his little school books, the child, unhelped, can make little 
use of our vast storehouse of print. Father and mother and teacher are 
the sources of wisdom to him. If these fail him, he can only fall back 
into vacuity, or mischievous or dangerous experiments. 

“But,” you say, “so many of his questions are foolish.” Are they? 
Or is it because you don’t know the answers, are unwilling to admit your 
ignorance, and unwilling also to take a little trouble? Some of the ques¬ 
tions are unimportant, no doubt, some impertinent. Those kinds are 
matters of good sense and good manners. Very few of the questions are 
foolish. To the little child, the world is full of delightful mysteries. His 
senses are keen to first impressions, and he observes a multitude of natural 
phenomena. He instinctively knows, long before he can reason about it, 
that every effect has a cause. Hence his endless hows and whys. 

Simply with the idea of satisfying this curiosity, and relieving the 
harassed parent and teacher, we collected nearly one hundred typical 
questions asked by children of active minds, and searched out the answers. 
The result was very astonishing. Nine-tenths of them steered inquiry 
straight into the natural sciences—not only into botany and zoology, but 
into physics and astronomy. We began to understand the adult point 
of view a little better. Far from being foolish, these questions were pro¬ 
found. It would require the wisdom of the sage to answer all of them, 
or a library of reference books far beyond the reach of the ordinary family, 
school or village. It revealed to us a new wonder world of the little child’s 
mind; and humility that we fall so far below his demands. If we can 
answer a few of his questions here, and change the attitude of his parents 
and teachers toward his questions, we shall feel that, we have helped the 
world along a little way. 

Now, when a little boy asks: “Why does doggie turn ’round and 
’round, before he lies down? ” or “ Why does rain fall in little round drops?” 
we shall be able to look the little questioner frankly in the face, and say: 
“I don’t know, dear, but I’ll try to find out.” 

So here we start on a voyage of discovery into the fairy-world of 
how and why. 


352 



HOW MOVING PICTURES ARE MADE 

The making and operating of Moving Pictures has grown into a great industry, the manufacture of films 
by one concern amounting to ten millions annually. While devoted largely to amusement, the Moving Picture 
has become also an important educational factor. The following illustrations explain the optical principles 
involved, and the mechanism used in this curious and fascinating invention. 




Take a round iard like this, with a picture 
of a cage on one side and a picture of a bird 
on the other and make it whirl by means of 
a twisted string. It will look as if the bird is 
in the cage, because the image of the cage does 
not fade from the eye before the image of the 
bird is added to it. It is this ‘ ‘persistence of 
vision,” as it is called in Optics, that makes 
“moving” pictures seem to move. 



Fig. 2 


Picture No. 2 further illustrates this principle. 
Each of the little figures is in a slightly different 
position from the other. When one disk is 
turned and the figures are looked at through 
the slits in the other the figure seems to be 
jumping a hoop. This is because one image 
remains in the eye while another image, showing 
the arms and legs in a slightly different position, 
is added, thus causing the figure to seem to 
move. 



In order that each successive photograph 
may show a moving object in a position only 
slightly different from the preceding picture, 
photographs for moving pictures are taken very 
rapidly. At the moving picture show these 
photographs are run rapidly past a lens which 
magnifies and throws them on the screen. 
Figure 3 shows a moving picture machine with 
the reel of films in place. This style of machine 
is called the Cinematograph. 


Fig. 3 




































































Fig. 4 


To make moving pictures show clearly and distinctly on the 
screen it is necessary that each succeeding photograph be held in 
exactly the same position as the preceding photograph. Notice 
(Fig. 4) that the films have holes on either side. Into these holes 
fit the teeth of a wheel. As the wheel is turned these teeth catch in 
the holes, draw the film from the spool and hold each picture in 
position before the lense at the very spot where the preceding picture 
stood. 



Fig. 5 


Figure 5 shows the machine which punches these holes in the 
film. The film is fed into the machine from the left and is held steady 
by two small rollers, one of which you see in this end view of the 
perforating machine. The film is drawn along by a sprocket wheel 
—that is, a wheel with teeth like the sprocket wheel on a bicycle. 
These teeth fit into the holes in the film, as fast as they are made. 



Fig. 6 


Figure 6 shows how the wheel is stopped each time, after it has 
turned the length of one film. This stopping device is called a rachet 
gear. You have seen rachet gears on windlasses. Whenever the 
wheel stops a tooth drops into a hole in the wheel and holds it while 
the film is being perforated. Some of these machines make 15,000 
perforations in an hour. 



After a series of moving picture photographs have been taken 
the negatives must be developed. This is done by means of what is 
known as a “skeleton reel.’’ These reels are about three feet in 
diameter and seven feet long. They are mounted on standards. 

Figure 7 shows one style of developer. P and P are two drums. 
F is the film. D is the developer trough in which is the chemical 
solution through which the film is made to pass under the roller G. 


Fig. 7 












































After the development of the negatives comes the printing. The 
printing requires even more care than the development of the films. If 
the films have been stretched or if the pictures are not kept at exactly 
the same distance apart in printing, the pictures, when thrown on the 
screen, will have that trembling motion and blurred appearance which 
is so disagreeable and so hard on the eyes. Figure 8 shows a Cinemato¬ 
graph machine printing positives on a film R. The negative is wound 
on the upper spool. The film passes into a box. This box is a “dark 
room’’ that admits light only at the point where the two films pass. 
As they pass this little.window the picture on the negative film is printed 
on the positive film, just as the sun prints photographs exposed in a 
frame. Figure 9 shows another view of the same kind of a machine. 



Fig. 10 

By means of the apparatus shown in Figure 10 the moving picture 
is made to talk. Both the camera on the left and the phonograph on 
the right are operated by the electric motor you see on the floor between 
them. As this motor controls both the camera and the phonograph at 
the same time, the words are always made to fit the picture. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 

_ This is a picture of a moving 
picture film, actual size. On 
either side of the picture there 
is a margin like the unprinted 
part of a postage stamp, or the 
selvage on a piece of cloth. In 
this margin the holes are punched 
for controlling the films in the 
picture show camera. This is a 
picture of a man who is troubled 
by the appearance of ghostly 
visitors. Notice how slight is 
each change of position of the 
actors as you pass from picture 
to picture. 


























































































Copyright by Brown Bros. 

Here the films are being transferred from the picture taking camera reel to the reel for the show. You 
can see two of these “picture ribbons’’ passing from one reel to the other in front of the two girls to the 
left in the middle row. The man is examining a reel to see if there is any defect in it. Notice how much 
window space this room has. This is because the pictures must be examined and watched very carefully 
for defects before being shipped. 



Copyright by Brown Bros. 

In taking moving pictures a camera is used substantially the same kind as that for throwing them on 
the screen at the show. The reel containing the films, however, is on the inside of the outdoor machine. This 
is for convenience and safety in moving about. The man on the left is shouting directions through a mega¬ 
phone to the actors. As soon as the other two get the camera into position and very firmly set on its three 
solid legs, the men on the right will turn the crank. The film will pass rapidly before the lens. 



Courtesy of Technical World. 


Film makers go to great expense and trouble in making the films which cost you only five cents to see. 

This picture shows a head-on collision of locomotives taken for a moving picture company, which 
occurred at Indianapolis on July 4, 1911, and was arranged by the Society of American Engineers. There 
was an engineer in charge of each locomotive. After opening the throttle and sending the locomotives toward 
each other at the rate of sixty miles an hour, the engineers jumped from their cabs. 








HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


WHAT ARE TEARS FOR? 

That is what a little blue-eyed girl asked her mama, when told 
that she shouldn’t cry so much. She had the perfectly right idea 
that there must be some good reason for tears since she had so many 
of them and right “on tap” all the time. 

“Why,” said her mama, “tears are to wash your blue eyes 
with, of course. Eyes are little windows of the soul. In this dusty 
world windows become dim. Unless they are washed often we 
cannot see through them very well. Every time you wink, two tears 
come and bathe the eye-balls. What a lot of washings. And how 
bright and clear your eyes are, like the blue sky after a shower.” 

Back of the upper, outer corner of each eye is a tear bottle or 
bag, about as big as an almond nut. In some strange way this gland 
makes tears, stores them, and lets them out through several little 
hair-like tubes. The winking of the upper eye-lid spreads the water 
over the eye-ball. The tears flow away through little canals, that 
open from the low r er inner corners of the eye into the nose. Most 
of the time just enough tears come to keep the eye-balls, the lining 
of the eye-lids and of the nose clean and moist. But several things 
will make the tears come with a rush. A bad cold, a big cinder in 
the eye, or a very little hurt or trouble anywhere on the body, or 
in the mind or heart, sometimes, will make the tears gush out. Just 
why one should feel like crying when hurt, or in trouble, no one knows. 
The writer has noticed that certain feelings of pain or grief make 
the eye-balls burn. Very likely tears flow to relieve this burning 
sensation, since tears are meant to protect the eyes from injury. 
But if one weeps too often, or too long at a time, the tears them¬ 
selves are harmful. The salt in the tears inflames the eye-balls, lids 
and nose and makes them red and swollen. Many children cry too 
easily over trifling hurts and troubles. That isn t using tears; it s 
mis-using them. 


353 



354 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


DOGGIE KNOWS WITH HIS NOSE 

If you have a dog it will be very interesting to find out in what 
way he knows you. Mr. John Burroughs says he appeared one day 
before his dog in a new outing suit of khaki. The dog eyed him 
suspiciously and backed away. Threatening him with a stick, the 
animal became excited and angry. When he spoke in his usual tone 
the dog came to him and smelled him. He acted very much ashamed 
for not knowing his master. A dog trusts his nose more than he 
does his eyes. When a shaggy dog is clipped close for hot weather, 
his dog friends think him a stranger. They jump out and bark at 
him. But when they come close enough to smell him they look 
very foolish over their behavior. A good house dog knows the members 
of the family and all the friends who come about the place by their 
smell. A stranger he detects instantly in the darkest night. Next 
to their sense of smell is hearing. Dogs know familiar voices. They 
trust their eyes the least of all and are thought to be near-sighted. 
For odors they have wonderful memories. It is this that enables 
many lost dogs to find their way home over long strange roads. 
While all dogs have keen scent, the bloodhound and other hunting 
dogs have it to an astonishing degree. Descended from breeds of 
wild dogs, that had to hunt distant and unseen prey, they learned 
to follow the scent of one animal through a confusion of other smells 
and to pick up a trail lost in running water. By their sense of smell 
collie and other shepherd dogs trace and find sheep lost in storms. 
The St. Bernard dogs in the Alps Mountains find travellers buried 
in the snow. Terriers have keen noses for rats, and other burrowing 
rodents. Try your dog by changing clothing with a little friend. 
He will jump first on one, then on the other, and show plainly that 
he is puzzled. You may have to speak to him before he is sure which 
is his master. 

WHAT IS SMOKE? 

That depends upon the kind of fuel that is burned. Smoke 
from a fire of dry hard wood, from anthracite coal or from a gas 
flame is chiefly a column of hot air. Often it cannot be seen. There 
is very little solid matter in it. The thick, black smoke from loco¬ 
motives, factories and house chimneys is made by burning soft coal 
in a wasteful way. If you will turn back and read the little story 
of how gas is made, you will understand the changes that take place 
when coal is heated. In making gas, the coal is not burned but is 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


355 


roasted in an airless retort or oven. The heat sets the coal gas free. 
This is allowed to escape into a tank where it is stored for future use. 
When the oven is opened there is found, not ashes but coke, the 
carbon of the coal. Nothing has been consumed. The gases and 
the carbon have simply been separated. Both the coke and the 
gas can be burned and with very little smoke. 

In all coal fires this separation of gases and carbon takes place 
at low r , roasting temperatures—too low, indeed, to heat our houses 
or to make steam in boilers Put a shovelful of soft coal into your 
furnace and watch the thick, yellow gas hover over the black mass 
before it bursts into flame. Open a draft below the fire box. The 
oxygen in the air helps to make a hotter fire. Hot air rises. You 
can see these gases and coal dust rush up the smoke pipe, on the 
column of hot air. They are carried away before they have time 
to burn. Of course, then, you understand that smoke means waste 
of fuel. Under boiler and house furnace fires, from two to five tons 
of coal are burned to produce the heat that is in one ton. 

For more than a hundred years it has been understood that 
we could save a lot of money if we burned our smoke, and at the 
same time make this world a sweeter, cleaner, healthier place to 
live in. Coal gas is poisonous to breathe, and carbon dust is bad 
for the throat, nose and lungs. Both. are bad for plants, for grass, 
flowers and shade trees. Countless smoke-consuming devices have 
been patented since James Watt took out a patent in 1785. These 
devices have aimed at two things: Skillful feeding of fuel and manage¬ 
ment of drafts to make less smoke, or trapping the smoke and feed¬ 
ing it to the fire again. Some men who have studied the smoke 
problem, think that all soft coal should be turned into gas and coke 
at the mine, and then be burned separately, the gas sent to cities 
through big pipes. This would be possible for factories and houses, 
but not for locomotives and steam vessels. Can you tell why? There 
are several fortunes in this field of invention for bright boys who 
will be men by and by. Any boy has a good beginner’s text book 
on the smoke problem, in the furnace at home. 

WHAT IS COLOR BLINDNESS? 

There are a certain number of people in every hundred whose 
eyes seem to be perfect except in color seeing. One doctor has dis¬ 
covered that one person out of every fifty-five cannot tell red from 
green. One in sixty confuses brown and green. Pink and yellow 


356 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


look alike to some people, and blue and green to others. To a very 
few people everything looks to be black and white. The cause of 
color blindness is thought to lie in the nerve fibres in the retina, or 
screen at the back of the eye, on which pictures are thrown. Three 
nerve fibres are supposed to give sensations of red, green and violet. 
Orange, yellow and blue are seen by combinations of sensations. 
Now one of these fibres, most often the red, may be non-sensitive. 
That person will not see red at all. White to him appears bluish- 
green, with the red rays in the white absent. Violet looks blue, 
orange yellow. 

In some cases there may be a total absence or paralysis of a 
nerve fibre sensitive to a certain color. But in a great many cases, 
it now appears that a defective color sense can be developed by 
proper education, just as the sense of form, size and distance can 
be educated. Perhaps you have wondered why brightly colored 
cards, pegs, wools, crayons and paper weaving-mats are used by 
the children in kindergartens, and in the baby grade in school. 
Teachers find little children as clumsy with their eyes as with their 
fingers. Many little children appear to be tone deaf, also, although 
hearing perfectly otherwise. It was a wonderful discovery in educa¬ 
tion that our five senses can be developed and trained. Thoughtful 
people noticed that women see colors better than men, as a rule. 
Girls have no better eyes than boys, but their interest in dress, house 
furnishings and flowers, brings colors into their daily lives. In France 
there are men silk dyers in factories whose color sense is so developed 
by use that they can grade sixty shades of gray. 

Perhaps some boys who read this may think color of little 
importance in business, except to artists, decorators and dyers. Well, 
a farmer who could not see red would not be a good man to pick 
cherries. And how about signal lights on railway lines, lighthouses, 
bridges and in mines? Some wrecks are thought to be due to the 
inability of the engineer or pilot to tell red from green. Many rail¬ 
roads now examine the eyes of train men to detect color blindness. 
Since experiments show that the sense of red is most apt to be absent, 
it would seem that red signal lights should not be used at all. Green 
and violet are said to be least often confused. To the man blind to 
red rays, violet appears to be blue. It would be an interesting game 
for you to test the color-seeing powers of yourself and of your family 
and schoolmates. It could be done by cutting up a set of kinder¬ 
garten weaving mat papers and pasting the strips on sheets of white 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


357 


paper. Each person should have a sheet and be required to label 
the colored strios in writing. 

WHY THE NEEDLE IN THE COMPASS POINTS NORTH 

Have you a little iron horse-shoe magnet? It looks like any 
other bent bar of iron, but pins, needles and other bits of metal will 
cling to the ends of the horse-shoe. They will even jump a little 
way to get to the magnet, and can be lifted by it. A magnet is much 
more than an interesting toy. Magnetism is one of the biggest forces 
in nature. It is mixed up with electricity and stormy weather and 
all sorts of things. Our big, beautiful earth is a huge magnet. Its 
greatest points of attraction are at opposite ends, just as they are 
in the little horse-shoe magnet. One end of the earth magnet is 
away up near the north pole; the other is just as far down, near the 
south pole. These places are called the earth’s magnetic poles. 
Their attraction for iron is made use of in navigating ships on the 
ocean. 

The little instrument that, by the attraction of the magnetic 
poles for iron, is used to find directions at sea, is called the compass. 
It is a round box with a glass cover, and with a dial marked off some¬ 
thing like the face of a clock. Over the dial a double-pointed needle— 
like the hands of a watch—swings on a pivot around the center. 
But the dial of a compass is not marked off in figures like the face 
of a watch. It is lettered. “N” means north, “S” south, “E” 
east and “W” west. These letters divide the dial into four quarters. 
Between them are “NE,” northeast, and so on, up to a great many 
subdivisions. The captain of a vessel holds the compass-box level. 
The needle swings around and points toward the north magnetic 
pole. He turns the box slowly until the needle end rests over the 
“N,” north on the dial. Comparing that with the way in which 
the vessel is moving forward, he can tell in which direction he is 
journeying, and can direct the pilot to steer in any direction in which 
he wishes to go. 

HOW THE MOON PULLS THE SEA 

Did you ever go to the sea shore for a vacation? And did you 
build forts and dig caves in the sand on the beach? Then, when 
you went to play the next morning, you found the beach smooth. 
Your forts and caves were gone. Grown people told you the tide 


358 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


came up and washed everything away. A tide is the rising and fall¬ 
ing of the ocean along the shore. The moon pulls the water up and 
then lets it go again, so it falls back. See if you can under¬ 
stand it. 

You know how the earth pulls the apple down? It pulls every¬ 
thing on or near its surface toward its own center. And everything 
near enough to be pulled, pulls back as hard as it can. The earth pulls 
the moon, and the moon pulls the earth. Although it is much smaller 
than the earth it is just the right size, for its distance away, to keep 
from falling into or away from the earth. We cannot see its pulling 
power on the solid parts of the earth. But the ocean is made of 
water. A slope of land, a brisk wind, many things set water in 
motion. It feels the pulling power of the moon. Whenever the moon 
rises over the ocean, it pulls the water that is just under it. So, a 
great wave, or tide, travels under the moon across the wide sea. 
When the shore is reached this wave rises higher against the rocks, 
or spreads over level sand beaches. When the moon sets, the wave 
goes back to the old level. 

We know this is so because the tide always comes up with the 
rising, and goes out, or ebbs, with the setting moon. If the moon 
stood still, and always rose and set at the same hours, we could not 
be so sure that it had so much to do with the tides. But as the moon 
travels around the earth in twenty-eight days, it rises nearly half 
an hour later at any given place, every day of its journey. The 
tides rise just so much later every day, too. 

The sun also makes tides. But the sun is so very, very far away, 
that its pull on our waters is very much less than the moon’s. We 
would hardly notice it if it wasn’t for one thing. Sometimes, for 
a few days in every month, when the sun and the moon are both on 
the same side of the earth, they pull together. Then the tides rise 
the highest of all. About two weeks later in the month, the sun is 
on one side of the earth and the moon is on the opposite side. Then 
they pull away from each other. The moon wins, in this tug of 
war, but it cannot pull the water nearly so high. Twice in the 
month the moon’s and sun’s pulls are at right angles to each 
other. Then the tides are just of moderate height. If you live 
near a seashore, make a record of tide soundings or points reached 
by the tide every day for a month, with the time of the rising 
of the tide and the moon, and find out for yourself how the moon 
pulls the sea. 



This picture shows how the moon attracts or 
pulls toward itself the water on the side of the 
earth nearest it, causing a high tide. It also 
draws the earth away from the water on the other 
side, leaving a high tide there. 



In this picture the moon and the sun being on 
the same side of the earth, both pulling the same 
way, a very high tide is caused, called spring 
tide. 



When the moon is on one side of the earth and the sun on another, as shown here, each pulling 
toward itself, the attraction of the moon is weakened and the tides are not so strong. These lesser 
tides are called neap tides. 
















HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


359 


SOUND WAVES AND THE TELEPHONE 

“Hello, central!” 

“Hello!” The answer comes back in a second. You don’t 
know, perhaps, that as soon as you unhook the receiver, a tiny knob 
of light flashes out below your telephone number on the far-away 
switchboard of “Central.” An operator, with a receiver strapped 
over her ears and a transmitter just below her mouth, sits before 
the switchboard. She is only one of dozens of young women operators. 
In front of each is an upright switch-board, or table on edge, that is 
punched as full of little round numbered holes as a honeycomb. 
Below each hole on the board, is a tiny glass knob no bigger than a 
shoe button. One of those little button lamps and one of those holes 
belong to your wire. When you ring up Central, your lamp flashes 
out on the board like a firefly. The operator sees it. She pushes 
a plug that carries a wire into that hole above the light, hears you 
and answers you. 

“Give me Main 3908, please.” 

She pushes another plug on the end of a wire that connects 
with yours into the hole showing the number you called for. That 
rings the bell m the house of the friend you want to talk with. 

“All right,” calls the operator. “Put in your nickel, please.” 

“Hello! Is that you, Dick?” 

Yes. You know his voice! And he knows yours, although 
you may be a mile, or ten or more miles apart. Then you have as 
nice a chat as if you were in the same room. 

This wonderful thing is so common that we forget just how 
wonderful it is. Would you like to know about it? 

Did you ever drop a pebble into a pool of still water? It makes 
a ring wave. Water rings widen and spread to the shores of the 
pond. Sound makes ring waves in the air. In a narrow valley these 
sound waves strike the rock walls and come back to you as echoes. 
It is these air waves that carry sounds to our ears (see Acoustics, 
Wave-Motion and Fairy Prince Echo), but they do not carry 
them very far. Men who have gone up in balloons say that a mile 
up in the sky, the only earth-sound they can hear is the whistle of 
a locomotive. How far away can you hear and recognize the voice 
of a friend? 

Now there are electric waves as well as air, water and light 
waves. Electric waves travel fast and far. By striking the key of 
a telegraph instrument, in dots ( and dashes that stand for letters 


360 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


and words, messages are sent over wires charged with electricity, 
across wide lands and under wide oceans. These dots and dashes 
of sound are received just as they are sent. So telegraph operators 
know each other’s ways of rattling off messages, just as you know 
the voices of many friends apart. It was long thought that electric 
wires would carry words and the very tones of the human voice, if 
a way could be found to get them on the wire. Of course, a spoken 
word cannot strike a key, as a finger can. But it can travel on an 
air wave, strike a rock wall and make an echo of itself. 

“ Make a wall, then, to catch air waves,” was the idea the inventor 
of the telephone got. “ But don’t let the sound bounce back in 
echoes. Pass them on to an electric wire.” The “wall” in the tele¬ 
phone, is a little round thin iron disc about as big as a penny, stretched 
as tight as a drum head. That is what you have in your ear—a 
drum head—to catch and pass on sound to the nerve of hearing. 
The auditory nerve is a sort of telephone wire to the brain. 

This little iron drum head in the telephone connects with an 
electric wire. It catches the air waves made by your voice and passes 
them to the wire. On the electric waves the sounds travel with the 
speed of light to a drum-head disc in the receiver held at the ear 
of your friend. There the electric waves are changed back to air 
waves again, and your friend hears your words just as you speak 
them. 

Isn’t that wonderful? 

THE GAS WE BURN 

When coal was first mined in England, it was noticed that an 
ill-smelling gas often escaped from the seams of the coal and made 
miners ill. In several mines this gas was accidentally set afire and 
the flame could not be put out. Around such flames mine owners 
built brick flues and led the gas out of the mine through iron pipes. 
There it often burned like a torch, lighting up the mine shaft, for 
months and years. This gas was called the “spirit of the coal.” 
But no one thought of trying to find out how it was made, or of 
making any use of it for many years. 

It was a Scotch miner named William Murdoch, who earned only 
five dollars a week, who got to thinking and experimenting with coal 
gas. Perhaps because he smelled the same gas from the grate fire in 
his cottage, sometimes, he suspected that, far down in the mine, a 
seam of coal must be smouldering. He filled a kettle with coal, fitted 


FLYING MACHINES 



Courtesy Technical World Magazine 

HOW MEN FLY WITH MACHINES. You steer a flying machine with rudders very much as you steer 
a boat; but, as you see in this picture of the Morane monoplane, a flying machine has two kinds of rudders. 
One kind is for turning to the right or left, the other is for turning up or down. In this picture A A are the 
rudders (elevating planes they are called) for raising or lowering the machine. The vertical rudder C turns 
it to right or left. At first most machines had two horizontal or elevating rudders—one in the front and one 
in the rear. Notice the front elevators of the Wright machine in the article on Aeronautics. Now many 
machines, including the Wright machine, are without front elevators Of what do the sloping planes and 
the elevating rudders (AA) remind you? Yes, a kite; and they raise the flying machine in the same way 
the kite is raised. 



Courtesy Technical World Magazine 

HOW THE BIRD MEN IMITATE THE HAWK. In this picture Captain Beek.^of the United 
States Army, is “banking” (tipping) at a turn for the same reason a bicycle rider “banks” at turns on an 
oval track. ' He is using the vertical rudder B. A and C are the rear elevating rudders or planes. F and D 
are “aelerons.” “Aelerons” are hinged sections added to the wings to help balance the machines by keeping 
an even keel. E is the front elevating rudder In the Curtiss machine there is a wheel on the back frame 
of the seat for controlling the vertical rudder. This wheel moves as the rider’s body moves and operates the 
aelerons just as a hawk adjusts the motions of his wings by the movement of his body when he is sailing. 

All the successful monoplanes that have been tried in this country are controlled by a lever with a wheel 
on top like the controlling device of an automobile But the aviator can not only turn to right or left, by 
“warping” the rear edges of the wings; he can, with this same lever, move the elevating planes by moving 
the lever forward or back. The vertical rudder is operated by a foot lever. In the Bleriot machine the engine 
also is controlled by this steering wheel. 




















Courtesy Technical World Magazine 


INSIDE THE WRIGHT MACHINE. In the article on 
Aeronautics you see a picture of the first successful flying 
machine—that of the Wright brothers. This picture takes 
you inside of one of these machines. The radiator G which, 
as you see, looks very much like the radiator of an auto¬ 
mobile, is on the side of the seat. It is placed at the side 
because if it should be tom loose it is less likely to fall on 
the operator than if it were behind him. The lever AB has 
two motions—one forward and back, like the lever of a 
locomotive—and one other motion. Notice that the handle 
of the lever is hinged so that it can be moved independent 
of the lever. With these two motions the vertical lever is 
turned to the right or left and the wing warping is con¬ 
trolled. * ‘Warping’ ’ is like steering when you are coasting 
down hill. If a breeze tips up the right wing too much 
you work the lever and tip up the left wing to the breeze 
and so balance yourself. But this is likely to cause the 
machine to turn; so you must watch the upright rudder 
too. The lever C operates the horizontal rudder which is 
to the machine what the bird’s tail is to the bird, being 
used to steer the machine up or down or to check speed. 
Have you ever noticed how a bird tips his tail down when 
he is getting ready to light? H is the cord for stopping 
the engine. To make it go faster or slower you move 
lever E. 



Courtesy Technical World Magazine 

Tom Sopwith, the English birdman, in his 
Bleriot Machine at the Chicago Meet 


















THE RUDDER AND TAIL CONSTRUCTION OF THE WRIGHT MACHINE. Notice that the 
Wright machine has two rudders. This is intended to give a steadier control. Builders of flying machines 
have different ideas as to how they should be built, just as boys differ about the best way to make a kite 
or sled, but the Wright brothers are generally considered to have the most accurate and practical knowledge 
of flying machines that has yet been reached. They do not go in for sensational flying and the class of 
birdmen who risk their lives for records are giving way to scientific flyers and practical students of flying 
as an art. 



Courtesy Technical World Magazine 

A FLYING MACHINE THAT CAN SWIM. This mechanical bird is like a duck: it is as much at 
home in the water as in the air. And—would you believe it—it can light on the water, swim _a short 
distance and rise again without stopping. This is just as you have seen a seagull do when he dips into the 
water for food. This wonderful machine can also touch the ground, run like an automobile for a short 
distance and rise again without stopping. . . 

The cylinders which vou see at each end of the lower plane are filled with air for keeping the machine 
afloat in the water. The wheels shown are not those that belong to the machine, but are part of the hauling 
truck. ) 



































Courtesy Technical World Magazine 

AN ENGINE THAT WORKS LIKE A WHIRLIGIG. A very important thing in flying machines is 
to have the engine that supplies the power as light as possible. In recent years there has been perfected a 
type of engine known as the turbine or rotary engine. If you will look up Turbine in Vol. IV, you will see 
that a turbine works on the principle of a windmill; the power and motion being produced by steam driven 
against blades. The engine shown is called the Gnome. You can see why, for it is the most powerful machine 
made for its size. You know what powerful people the gnomes of fairyland are. Another great advantage 
of the rotary engine is that it requires but little fuel in proportion to the power produced. The type of rotary 
engine known as the Parsons turbine, as you learn from the article on the turbine, was first used directly 
on dynamos just as you see in this picture. 



Courtesy Technical World Magazine 

THE REAR END OF THE MORANE MONOPLANE. This picture takes you up very close where 
you can see all the details of the steering machinery and also the skids of one of the famous flying machines 
—the Morane monoplane. A monoplane is a machine with one set of wings, while a biplane has two sets 
of wings. The vertical rudder of the Morane is marked C and the fixed tail B. The kite-like elevating planes 
are shown at AA. D is the tail skid. These skids are like the runners of a sled and are to help the machine 
over rough ground in starting and lighting. The part of the machine here shown is called the * ‘fuselage 
or main body. 













HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


361 


a cover of wet clay with an iron tube in it, connecting with a tank, 
over the kettle. Then he built a fire under the kettle to roast , not 
burn the coal. Sure enough the same yellow, smoky, ill-smelling 
gas came through the tube. He caught a tank full of it and corked 
the tube. Over the end of the tube, when he opened it, he fitted a 
silver thimble. In this he bored a hole. He lit the gas that escaped 
through the hole in the thimble and had a good light to read by. 
You see he had a gas storage tank, a gas pipe and a gas jet. He 
had everything we have today, except a key to turn his gas on and 
off, and he could not control the pressure so as to get a strong, steady 
flame, as the supply of gas in the tank lowered. 

You can make gas just as William Murdoch did. Buy a clay 
pipe for a penny. Fill it with coal dust. Cover the top with your 
modelling clay, or with stiff mud. Then set the bowl of the pipe 
over a gas jet or on a bed of coals to get very hot. In a few minutes 
a yellowish smoke will come through the stem of the pipe. Touch 
a match to it. It will burn, but not very clearly, for it is full of smoke 
and other impurities. 

In gas-making today, these impurities are taken out to make 
a colorless, smokeless gas and a clear flame. First the coal is roasted 
to release the gas. As fast as it escapes from the coal, it goes through 
pipes into big tanks, and from them is forced through water and 
lime to purify it. At last it goes into a gasometer, or tank, that 
floats with an open bottom on a well of water. The gasometer presses 
the gas on the water, rising and sinking according to the amount of 
gas inside. This keeps the pressure always the same, and forces the 
gas into the service pipes that run to our houses under the streets. 
In this way our gas pipes are kept full. So all we have to do, when 
we want a light, or a fire in the kitchen gas-range, is to turn a key 
and light, the gas at the burner. 

BIRDS AND BALLOONS, KITES AND AIR SHIPS 

The Chinese and Japanese people have a kite-flying day. Most 
of their kites are made in the shapes of birds and butterflies, with 
wide-spread wings. They make them of hollow bamboo, the lightest 
and strongest wood known, and cover them with thin, tough rice- 
paper or silk. Very likely, many of them think no other kind of kite 
could stay up in the air. But really they stay up because their weight 
is spread out so that a great deal of air can get under them to support 
them. A bar of iron rolled into a sheet and pressed into a boat floats■ 


362 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


If all the material in a kite were crumpled into a lump, it would sink 
or drop through the air. Aeroplanes or flying machines are built 
much like kites—light, strong and spread out, giving a great deal 
of surface to the air. The chief difficulty in making use of them is 
that they must carry an engine, and at least one man to operate them. 
A balloon can carry men because it is filled with a gas that makes 
it lighter than the air, for a time. 

Now a bird is like a balloon and a kite and a flying machine. 
Its wings give it the surface spread of the kite. Then it has air 
spaces in its body, and even in its bones and feather quills, like the 
strong, light, hollow frame-work of bamboo Its feather dress is 
as light as paper or silk. No engine ever made is as powerful, in 
proportion to its weight, as the living, beating heart of a bird; no 
propellers as strong as the bird’s wing-muscles, no rudder as flexible 
as a bird’s tail. The shape of a bird’s body is that of a little boat 
or a fish. It is sharply pointed in front and rear, with softly curving 
sides. The close-lying feathers are oiled so as to offer the least 
resistance to the air. The legs, being of no use in flying, are light 
and slender, and are folded back out of the way. With its wings 
a bird beats the air downward. 

The bird knows very well that it is heavier than the air. When 
it wants to come down, it folds its wings and drops. Near the ground 
or perch, it raises its wings for a parachute, to break its fall. The 
aeronaut who jumps from a balloon uses a parachute. You see how 
much men have learned from birds in making kites, balloons and 
flying machines. 

The first flying machines that men tried to make were really 
cigar or boat or bird-shaped, gas-filled balloons, with an engine to 
drive them in any direction through the air. That borrowed the 
light, air-filled body of the bird, the rudder tail and the beating- 
heart engine, but it made no use of the wing-power. The aeroplane 
or true flying machine of today, uses the wing-spread idea of the bird 
and the kite, with the engine heart and the rudder tail. (See 
Aeronautics.) 

WHY RAIN FALLS IN DROPS 

It’s very lucky for us that it does. If rain fell from a cloud in 
a continuous stream, like a river, anyone caught under it would be 
drowned. There are two perfectly good reasons why rain cannot 
do this. The first reason is that a rain cloud is not a tank, and the 


LIFE STORY OF A RAIN SPLASH 

A S you have watched a rain drop falling in a pond, you have 
TA. noticed how, as the drop strikes, it forms a little crater. It it 
was a gentle rain, you seemed, to see a little fountain start up front 
the center of this crater or coronet. The next illustration shows 
this fountain, but there is no coronet around it. Why? The coronet 
disappears before the fountain starts up! The reason you seem to 
see the fountain inside the coronet is that the picture of the coronet 
which is made in your eye when 
the drop strikes has not faded 
before the fountain springs up; 
so vou seem to see them both 
at once. 

Our pictures were taken by 
Professor A. M. Worthington. 

Head Master of the Royal 
Naval Engineering College in 
Davenport, England. He spent 
fifteen years studying rain 
splashes and taking their pho¬ 
tographs. The hrst “splash” 

(upper left hand picture in 
group of three! is made by a 
rain drop falling in running 
water; the second in still wa¬ 
ter ; the third by a pebble. 1 he 
series of five next below show, 
in order, the different things 
that happen to a splash above 
the water; the four pictures 
at the bottom of the page, what happened when 
a rough stone was dropped twenty-two feet. 

The first three of these show what happened 
above water and the next one what happened 
below. 


































HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


363 


water in it is not in a liquid state. A cloud is just a great mass of 
vapor, in which the water is as finely divided as in fog or steam. When 
the cloud is blown upon by a current of cold air, the vapor runs 
together, turning to liquid, or the form in which we know it as water. 
But it cannot form a mass of water in the air, because it hasn’t time 
before it gets so heavy that it falls. And vapor always condenses 
on something solid, as you can see it do on a window-pane or the 
outside of a pitcher of ice-water. The only solid things in the air 
are particles of dust. Using a grain of dust as a center of attraction, 
vapor condenses on it in just as big drops as the air will hold up. 
As that amount is very small, indeed, the vapor in a cloud falls in 
millions of little round drops, and each drop has a tiny grain of dust 
in the very center. No wonder the sky looks as if it had had its 
face washed after a rain! 

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY BY THE STARS 

Away down in the kindergarten the little tots sing a song: 

“This way’s east and this way’s west, 

Soon I’ll learn to know the iest.“ 

They do learn, too. They learn that if one stands with the right 
hand pointing to the morning sun, one faces north, and the back 
is to the south. But they do not learn, until they are much older, 
and sometimes not at all, how to find the way at night. And it’s 
worst of all to be lost at night, too. 

Very high in the sky, on clear nights, is always to be seen a 
certain group of bright stars. There are seven stars m the group, 
and they make a very big dipper with a handle. Four of the stars 
form the flaring-bowl, two at the top, two nearer together at the 
bottom. The other three stars make a handle for the dipper. The 
last star is lower, giving a bend to the handle. Now, you must find 
the two stars that form the outer line of the dipper’s bowl, from 
the top to the bottom. Imagine a straight line connecting those 
stars. Extend that line upward in the same direction until it 
runs into another bright star. That is the north, or polar star. 
Face toward the polar star and you will be looking almost due 
north. FQr many hundreds of years sailors guided vessels over 
wide seas by this polar star. So don’t you think it might be useful 
to a lost child? 


364 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


HOW THE DAYS GOT THEIR NAMES 

Sunday gets its name from the Sun. In olden times many 
peoples worshiped the sun, the heat and light giver. The sun was 
believed to be the source of all life. Because they were the most 
wonderful and mysterious things in Nature, next to the sun, the 
moon and stars were worshipped as gods of lesser power. The moon 
was thought to be the wife of the sun, the mother of all things, as 
the sun was the father. The sun rode his golden chariot by day, 
the moon her silver chariot by night. He was everything mighty, 
fierce and strong; she everything gentle, beautiful and good. So 
the second day of the week was named for the moon goddess—Mon¬ 
day. Tuesday was named for the brave Norse war-god, Tyr, who 
made the fierce wolf a captive by sacrificing an arm. It is curious 
that, in French, Tuesday is called Mardi. That comes from the Greek 
war-god, Mars. The little fiery-red planet Mars is named after the 
same god. Wednesday was named for Woden or Odin, the chief god 
of the Norsemen. He ruled over Valhalla, the hall of the heroes 
slain in battle. That is the reason we keep the “d” in Wednesday. 
It is really Woden’s Day. Thursday was named for Thor, the Norse 
thunder god. He was the same as the Greek Jove, the strongest 
of all the gods. Jove and Thor had the cheerful habit of using thunder 
bolts for hammers. Friday is named for Freya, the w T ife of Woden 
and the mother of Thor. You see how fond ancient people w r ere of 
families of gods. Saturday w'as named for Saturn, the big planet 
with bright moon-rings around it. The god Saturn was worshiped 
by the Romans and he had one special day in the week that was 
given to feasting and games. This celebration was called the Satur¬ 
nalia. Perhaps that is why Saturday, today, is more or less of a holi¬ 
day everywhere. It is as hard to break habits of whole peoples, 
that are fixed by many generations, as it is for a person to break a 
habit. You would think it something terrible to have to go to school 
on Saturday. Hundreds of years ago, in Rome, little boys felt the 
very same way about it. 

HOW THE MONTHS GOT THEIR NAMES 

Four of the months aren’t named. They just have numbers, 
but as the numbers are given in Latin, and Latin is a dead and 
by-gone language, their numbers pass for names, and few people 
are any the wiser. But we’ll begin with the first one that has a 
name, and that’s the very first month—January. That’s such a 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


365 


good name it couldn’t possibly be improved upon. The month was 
named for the old Roman god—-Janus, the god of beginnings and 
endings. In statues Janus is represented with two faces. One face 
looks to the past, the other to the future. January first is New Year’s 
day. Then we pay old debts and make new resolutions. We ring 
the old year out, the new one in. 

The name February comes from a festival of purification called 
Februa, in honor of a god. February, in Roman cities, was the 
month for the cleansing of temples and houses. It has lost its mean¬ 
ing with us, for February is far too cold for house cleaning. March 
is from Mars, the war god—a noisy, blustering month with storms 
and wind and cold that conquer the earth over again, year after 
year. That’s a good name, too. April comes from “aperit,” a Latin 
word that means “open.” April is the opener of the gates of birth. 
Her coming means the renewal of life on the earth—the awakening 
of the earth from winter sleep, and recovery from the wounds of 
wars. May is from Maia, a goddess. She was a daughter of Atlas, 
the god who held the earth up on his shoulders. Maia was the mother 
of Mercury, the messenger god who, with wings on his heels, ran 
errands between earth and heaven. Special honor was paid to Maia 
for having such a son. She, with her six sisters, was set up in the 
sky and turned into the seven stars that form the Pleiades; and 
the lovely month of May was named for her. June was named for 
Juno, the proud wife of the great god Jupiter. 

Beginning with July the months were numbered, until two very 
powerful Roman emperors ruled over most of the known world. 
These were Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar. Their names were 
given to July and August. Belief in the old pagan gods died out, 
and no man after the Caesars was thought great enough to be allowed 
to claim a month for his own. So the old numbers still stand. They 
are septem—seven; octem—eight; novem—nine; decern—ten. This 
is odd, for today these are not the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth 
months but the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth. When they were 
numbered, however, the year began with March instead of with 
January. So these names are not only numbers, they are the wrong 
numbers. But do you think we are ever likely to change them? 

WHAT ARE “DOG DAYS?” 

This is a very interesting question. To answer it completely 
one would need a book. It goes away-way back, farther than history, 


HOW AND WHY OP COMMON THINGS 


366 

into many strange beliefs of many ancient peoples. Today, by “ dog 
days” we mean the six weeks of mid-summer from the twenty-fifth 
of July to the fifth of September. Then the weather is the hottest 
and driest, and dogs are most liable to become mad. Many peoples 
of very old times noticed that this heated term began about the 
time the brightest star in the sky rose with the sun. This star is 
called Sirius, which means “burning.” It is in a group of stars called 
Canis Major. That is just Latin for Big Dog. You know many 
groups of stars, or constellations, are supposed to be arranged in the 
outlines of animals. One group is called the big bear. That is the 
one we know as the big dipper. One group is Taurus, the bull. 

Well, Sirius, the large burning star in the “big dog” group, 
came to be called the dog star. In Egypt, where stars were very 
important in every day affairs, many things happened about the 
time the dog star got up with the sun. The days became the hottest 
and driest, the Nile river was flooded by melting snows of far-away 
mountains, there was much sickness, and many dogs went mad. 
Every one of these things was supposed to be caused by the evil 
powers of the dog star. The people counted time, making the year 
begin with the rising of Sirius. This is known in history as the 
Canicular, or dog-star year. 

When men learned more about the stars it was discovered that 
it was just by accident that Sirius rose with the sun, over Egypt, at 
that particular time. The time of its rising, on any country, depends 
upon how far north that country lies, and the time grows a little 
later every year for all countries, owing to some forward movement, 
or procession of all the stars through space. In old Egypt “dog 
days” came in June. In early English almanacs they are recorded 
as beginning in the first days of July. Today, in northern countries, 
dog days run from late in July to early September. Sometime, 
centuries and centuries from now, the dog star will rise with the 
sun in mid-winter. Perhaps, by that time, all those stories will be 
forgotten, “dog days” will be no more, and little children will wonder 
why the burning star Sirius should ever have been called the dog 
star, and the group of stars in which it stands, the big dog. 

WHY AN APPLE FALLS TO THE GROUND 

Foolish question! You think. It falls because nothing holds it up. 

Exactly. But nothing seems to pull it down, either. Why 
doesn’t it fall up, instead of down? Ah, you never thought of that, 


HOW AND WHY OP COMMON THINGS 


367 


did you? But don’t be ashamed. Great and wise men had been living 
on this earth of ours for thousands of years, and not one of them ever 
asked that question until about two hundred and fifty years ago. 

One day Isaac Newton, a young man of twenty-three, who had 
just been graduated from Cambridge University, England, was 
sitting in the garden of his father’s house when he saw an apple fall. 
“Now, what made that apple fall?” he asked himself. Very likely 
he remembered that the great astronomer, Galileo, had proved that 
a one pound and a ten pound cannon ball, dropped together from 
the same height, struck the earth at the same instant. So weight 
had nothing to do with the falling. Then, perhaps, it was because 
the earth pulled unsupported objects toward itself. But if the earth’s 
pull was all there was to it, the heavier the object the faster it should 
fall. The falling object must also pull back. In order to pull down 
the heavier object, the earth must have to pull harder to overcome 
the stronger back pull. Everything in space must pull and be pulled, 
he thought, by other bodies. 

But why didn’t the moon fall to the earth and the earth fall 
into the sun, if this was so? This young man had made a great name 
for himself in mathematics in his college. Now he began to do sums 
in algebra using, for starting figures, the distance from the surface 
to the center of the earth, the sizes and distances of the sun and 
moon, and many other known measurements. Finally, he calculated, 
the pulling power must become weaker, as the distance between two 
bodies became greater. And the pulling-back power increases with 
the size of the object. At some point he thought these two powers 
must equal each other, and keep bodies suspended, unable to fall 
or to get away. This explained why the earth and other planets 
did not fall into the sun; why the smaller planets were nearest the 
sun; why the moon did not fall to the earth, and why all the heavenly 
bodies kept their places circling around the sun, and couldn t go 
wandering off and bumping into each other. 

So the whole science of astronomy was overturned, because a 
college boy in a quiet country garden asked that foolish question 
about an apple, and spent years and years in working out the answer. 
(See Gravity, Newton.) 

WHAT IS AN ECLIPSE? 

Do you know the poem: “I have a little shadow that follows 
after me?” The little boy’s shadow puzzled him. If he had only 


368 


HOW AND WHY OP COMMON THINGS 


known it, there are big shadows that puzzle grown up people. Every¬ 
thing in the world has a shadow that follows it, even our big earth 
and the moon. Sometimes we can see the shadows of the earth and 
the- moon. 

It is just like this. Did your papa ever make shadow rabbits 
on a wall? He lifted his folded hands between the lamp light and 
a wall, so that a shadow of them was thrown on the wall. Then, with 
his fingers and thumbs, he made a little rabbit’s snub nose and twitch¬ 
ing ears. A shadow is the same shape as the solid object that makes 
it. It is made only when the object gets between a bright light and 
a screen upon which the shadow can be thrown. Your body makes 
a shadow on the earth when you get between the sun’s light and the 
earth. When the moon gets between us and the sun, the moon’s 
shadow is thrown on the earth. That is a big, beautiful shadow! 
The moon hides the sun, and throws its own shadow over the half 
of the earth the sun happens to be shining on. The hiding of the 
sun is called an eclipse; the effect of it is a vast shadow on the earth 
that makes our sky as dark as night. You know it is always cooler 
in the shade or shadow of a house or tree than in the sun. In this 
enormous shadow of the moon the earth grows colder. Dew is formed. 
Flowers close their cups. Surprised chickens go to roost at midday. 

There is an eclipse of the sun by the moon once a year, but most 
years the eclipse is only partial, and we see it only if it happens in our 
daytime. There is an eclipse, or hiding of the moon, once in the every 
twenty-eight days that it takes the moon to go around the earth. 
Just once, on the journey, the earth gets between the sun and the 
moon. Then the earth’s shadow is thrown on the moon. The eclipse 
of the moon, too, is very seldom complete, and we do not see it at 
its best unless it happens at night, and when the moon is full and 
the sky clear. You can watch the earth’s shadow pass over the moon 
in a total eclipse with the naked eyes. But for an eclipse of the 
sun you will need smoked glass or blue or gray spectacles, for all 
around the black, hidden center of the sun, there will appear a dazzling 
corona, or crown, of the sun’s thick envelope of burning gases and 
far-thrown light rays. 

WHY DOES A BEE HUM? 

Hm! Hm! Let’s see. A bee isn’t the only thing that hums. 
A wheel, turning rapidly, whirs. A teakettle “sings” when the 
water boils. A violin string quivers with a musical note that slowly 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


369 


dies away. A tuning-fork hums. A fly buzzes. All these humming, 
singing, whirring, buzzing sounds are made in the same way—by 
vibrations, or regular, rapid motions. The bee moves its wings very 
rapidly and regularly, when it flies—ever so many times in a second. 
This vibration, or trembling, sets up air waves. As you learned in 
the story of the telephone, sound travels on these air-waves. We 
can hear these sounds if they are loud enough. If the vibrations 
are very close together they make a continuous sound. Bird’s wings 
beat the air, making a much louder sound than the bee, but the 
beats are so far apart that the sound of one dies away before the next 
comes. The humming bird’s wings vibrate as rapidly as a bee’s, so 
it hums like a very big bumble-bee. 

WHY ONIONS MAKE YOUR EYES WATER 

Your eyes really “water” a little all the time. All of our 
special sense organs—the tongue, the nose, the ears and eyes are 
kept moist by special glands. They are exposed to the air and must 
be kept clean. Moisture probably makes the nerves of the sense 
organs more sensitive to impressions. The inside of our hands and 
fingers, where we feel most keenly, are moister than the backs. Now, 
when there is trouble in a sense organ, like too strong a taste in the 
mouth, or a “cold” in the nose, or a grain of dust on the eye-ball, 
the moistening fluid just gushes out to wash it away. Then the eyes 
or nose or mouth “waters” or overflows. 

The eye is initated by many things beside dust. The fumes 
of vinegar, pepper and onions make the eyeballs smart. Instantly 
the tear-glands overflow to protect the eyes. If they could not do 
this the eyes would become inflamed, and they might be permanently 
injured. Just watch now and see if onions and pepper do not make 
you sneeze, and make your nose “water,” too, as well as your eyes. 
Think of lemons and feel your mouth “water.” 

WHY WE COUNT BY TENS 

We count by tens because we have ten fingers—five on each 
hand. Nature is very fond of counting by fives. Five fingers on 
each hand; five toes on each foot; five petals in an apple blossom; 
five rays in a star-fish. In the Story of Life you will find a whole 
chapter on how nature counts m making the parts of plants and 
animals. When men became bright enough to want to count, they 


370 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


counted on their fingers, because they always had those ten little 
counters with them. Children count in that way at first, and it is 
several years before they can think numbers inside their curly heads, 
without using these lively little counters. Here is a curious thing. 
Men got so very, very wise after awhile that they thought they could 
improve on nature’s w r ay of counting. In England the money system 
is all mixed up. A penny is two cents; a sixpence, twelve cents; a 
shilling, twenty-four cents; a crown, two and a half shillings, or sixty 
cents; a pound, twenty shillings, or four dollars and eighty cents. 
You see your fingers don’t help you a bit. Measurements are made 
by twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, and so on up to acres 
of land. Milk is measured by pints, quarts and gallons. English 
“tables” are terrible things to learn in school, and there is really 
no rule or sense in them. 

In America we use these English tables, except for money. There 
we go back to nature’s tens. Ten cents one dime, ten dimes one 
dollar, ten hundreds one thousand, and so on. A “nickel” is half 
a dime, or five cents, the same as the pink fingers baby learns to 
count with. In France everything—money, land, potatoes, ribbon, 
gold at the jeweller’s, quinine at the drug store, gas out of a pipe, 
is measured and counted by tens. This is called the metric system. 
Already this French metric system is used by scientific men, and 
it is thought, some day, as the peoples of the earth travel and trade 
more and more, we will all adopt this way of counting and measuring 
everything. So you see, it is pretty hard for men to be wiser than 
old Mother Nature. 


WHY DOES IRON RUST? 

When you grow up and are very, very wise you wall not say that 
iron rusts. You will say it becomes oxidized. That means that the 
surface of the iron is burnt by the oxygen of the air. Rust is really 
an iron ash. You can rub old rust off in a powder as fine as ashes. 
These iron ashes mix with the soil, giving it its good brown or red 
color. They dissolve in water, are taken up by plants and used to 
make their green color. Finally, through water and plants, we take 
iron into our bodies to give us the red color of our blood. 

Isn’t it a fine thing that iron can rust, or be burnt to a red ash 
by the oxygen of the air. Gold and silver do not rust, and so they 
are called the noble metals. But John Ruskin, a great English writer 
who thought the most useful things and men the noblest, said of 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


371 


iron: “It breathes the air, burns itself up in oxygen, and so gives 
its own life that we may live.” If you see a rusty tack or nail, push 
it into the earth. It might give you a dangerous wound. But the 
earth can make the noblest use of it, and give it back to us in rippling 
grass and beating hearts. 

WHAT MAKES WATER BOIL? 

I’ll read you your riddle, if you’ll read mine? 

When is water not water? 

When it’s ice or vapor! 

Right. Water is very uncertain. Most of the time it is a liquid. 
But if it gets too cold it turns into a solid. If it gets too hot—whisk! 
It is gone into the air! When it has vanished it is vapor, or water 
gas. Now air is a gas. The light you read by is made by burning 
coal gas. You cannot see a gas at all. So you cannot see vapor, or 
water gas. Needing a great deal more room as gas than it did as 
a liquid, water expands, or explodes, if confined in a kettle. This 
makes bubbles. We say the water boils. It will go on boiling, or 
expanding into bubbles, until the water all boils away, or escapes 
in gas, if the kettle is left over the fire. 

Here is a funny thing. If you boil water over a camp fire on 
the sea shore, you have to heat it to two hundred and twelve degrees. 
But on a mountain top, water boils before it gets as hot as that. This 
is because, on low ground, there is more air above the water than 
on land a mile or two higher. The lighter the air pressure the easier 
it is for water to expand into gas. Therefore, it takes less heat on 
a high mountain to make water boil. Of course, then, boiling water 
away up on the Alps isn’t nearly as hot as boiling water on a sea 
beach. In some very high places boiling water should be just about 
right for a warm bath, and water there would escape in gas long 
before it was hot enough to boil an egg. 

WHY AN IRON SHIP FLOATS 

If you put a nail or a lump of iron in a vessel of water it sinks 
at once. A piece of wood of the same size floats. So, until fifty 
years or so ago, people thought all boats and ships must be built 
of wood, or they would sink. 

Take a sheet-iron pan from the kitchen and put that on the 
water. It floats. It weighs just as much as the lump of iron that 
sinks, but the weight is spread or distributed over a larger volume 


372 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


of water. That is all. It has been made lighter than the total amount 
of water it rests upon. A ship is just such a hollow' vessel, whether 
made of iron or wood. When there is nothing in it, a ship stands 
high, almost on the surface of the water. As it is loaded with goods 
and people, it rides deeper. Load your sheet iron pan with a cargo 
of toys. Watch it go deeper. Don’t fill it to the top. That would 
make it as heavy as if it were solid. Then it would sink. 

If you live in a lake or sea-port town, you wall find that all ships 
have a water-line painted plainly around the hull. This is the safety 
loading line. No ship owners are allowed to load a vessel so heavily 
that that water line sinks below the surface of the water. Air spaces 
must be left, to keep the ship and its cargo lighter than the water 
that is beneath them. In the old days overloaded wooden vessels 
often sank. Today, iron ships ride the ocean safely. 

WHY WE HAVE TWO EYES 

Have you a stereoscope with views? The views show two 
photographs, almost alike, mounted side by side on the same card. 
Yet when you look at them through the lens of the stereoscope, you 
see but one picture. And that picture stands out, or is, as we say, 
“in relief.” In an ordinary photograph everything appears flat. 
In stereoscopic views the solid appearance of things, with depth, 
distance, or perspective, is brought out as in life. That is because 
the ordinary camera has but one eye, or lens. The stereoscopic 
camera has two lenses, and takes two views, as far apart as a pair 
of human eyes. You see but one picture, exactly as you would have 
seen the real view with your two eyes. If you examine them very 
closely you will see that the two views, are not exactly alike. One 
shows more detail on the right outer edge, the other on the left. Look 
at something with both eyes. Close one eye. At that end the object 
you look at is blurred. Open that eye and close the other. The 
object is blurred at the other end. When we look at things, we really 
get two images from two points of view, as we say. The brain focuses 
these images as the stereoscope lens does, and brings them together 
into one view. In this way we see solid, or “in relief,” so we judge 
of size, location, distance, solidity, color, and many other things 
better than if we had but one eye. 

ALVA AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP 

Is your house lighted by electricity? Did you ever stop to think 
that every other kind of light—of a candle, an oil lamp, or of gas, 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


373 


must have the oxygen of the air to feed the flame. But in an 
electric lamp there is no opening for air. The light is made 
in a vacuum, or closed place, with no air in it. And the light 
is not made by a flame at all It is made by an electric current 
passing along a loop of carbon filament as fine as a hair. It 
looks like pure magic, just as when Aladdin rubbed his lamp 
and did such wonderful things. A boy named Alva just rubbed 
his head, and did some wonderful thinking to make the electric 
lamp. 

Of course he knew about the electric arc-lamp that was invented 
long before he was born, and that was in use to light our streets when 
he was a young man. The arc-lamp has two thick carbon pencils 
with the points nearly meeting. An electric current running along 
a wire, and to the end of one of the pencils jumps to the other pencil 
carrying some carbon dust along for a bridge. This electric bridge, 
in burning carbon dust and oxygen of the air, gives a dazzling white 
light. But it burns the oxygen rapidly, and is, in many ways, unfit 
for indoor use. 

It seemed to our boy that as an electric flash is not a flame, a 
light should be made to pass over a carbon filament bridge in an 
air-tight lamp, so as not to burn up the oxygen we need to breathe. 
The trouble was to find a material for a small lamp, to take the place 
of the carbon pencils in the arc-light. He tried a hundred different 
things—platinum, cotton, bamboo and many others—and treated 
them in many ways. Some were too expensive, burning away too 
fast, even in a vacuum; some too frail. At last the perfect filament 
was made. Then how was the electric current to be carried to the 
filament inside an air-tight lamp? 

The filament ends were set in platinum wires into the solid neck 
of the lamp, that was made to screw into a socket. The snapping 
on and off of a button on the socket, connected and disconnected 
the platinum wires with the copper wires that carry the electric 
current into the house. But don’t you wonder how the filament is 
put into the closed glass bulb? When it is made the bulb is left open 
at the tip, where there is always a little knob or point. When the 
wires and the filament ends are set in the neck, the end of the bulb 
is heated, until the glass is soft. Then the air is sucked out making 
a vacuum, the tip is squeezed together, and there is the magic 
loop of light shut up in an airless, crystal prison. (See Edison, 
Electricity.) 


374 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


WHAT KEEPS A TRAIN OF CARS ON THE RAILS? 

A great many boys will think they know the answer to that. 
They will say it is because of the rim, or flange, that is on the inside 
edge of the car wheel. That rim merely steadies the car—keeps it 
running smoothly. But notice the next time you go to the railway 
station, that the rail is not flat on top. It is slightly rounded. If 
a freight car is standing on a side track you will see that the rim 
of the car wheel is not flat, either, and it does not rest squarely on 
the top of the rail. Beside having a ring-like flange on the inner 
edge, the broad rim of the wheel slants much like a cork that is made 
smaller at one end so it can be pushed only part way into a bottle. 
The outer circumference of a car wheel is smaller than the inner. 
And the wheel rests on the inner slope of the rounded rail. 

In running, the wheels press outward. That is, the wheels opposite 
each other push outward or away from each other. This is because 
it is easier for them to run along the smallest edge, and on top of 
the rail. By pushing outward, with the same force in opposite direc¬ 
tions, they keep each other balanced and on the rails. 

WHY MILK TURNS SOUR 

You know milk turns sour when it is a day old, sometimes. But 
you can buy milk that is a year old, or more, that is just as sweet 
as it was when it came from the cow. It is condensed, or evaporated 
milk, sealed in air-tight tins. When the can is opened the milk in 
it will soon turn sour. That is because it is exposed to the air. The 
air is full of microbes, or little living plant cells like yeast and mould. 
They are too small for you to see. Like all plants they need soil 
to grow in. The soil they like best is a liquid with sugar or starch 
in it like milk, fruit juices and flour batters. In growing, these tiny 
plants change sugar and starch to acids. So milk becomes sour and 
fruit juices ferment. After a time the fruit juices stop fermenting 
and turn to vinegar or wine. But because milk is an animal product 
it decays. 

If milk is cooled quickly, and kept on ice, the microbes find it 
much harder to live and multiply in it. Iced milk can be kept sweet 
for two or three days. It can be kept still longer if it is first heated 
in a corked bottle to a temperature that kills the microbes, then 
cooled quickly. This is called Pasteurizing. In cities, people have 
to Pasteurize milk to make it safe for babies. In evaporating, or 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


375 


condensing milk, the milk is heated in steam tanks to the boiling 
point, and kept there until most of the water passes off in vapor. 
Then it is sealed, boiling hot, in air-tight tins. Milk is a favorite 
food of many little plant and animal cells that harm us if we drink 
them. So, to keep as many of them out as possible, cows should be 
healthy, and stables and milkmen clean. All pails and strainers and 
bottles used should be boiled. The milk should go into the bottles 
as quickly as possible, be sealed up with waxed paper caps, cooled 
and shipped at once. The ice box must be kept clean, and the bottles 
sealed until the milk is wanted. Never allow milk to stand m a 
warm place, or in an open vessel. If you do, millions of microbes 
will move right in and begin to grow. 

CHILDREN, BIRDS AND TEAKETTLES 

Guess why they are alike. They all sing. They all sing in much 
the same way, too. 

Watch very close and find out how you sing. You fill your 
lungs with air. Then you nearly close your throat and force the air 
out through a small opening. As the air goes out, it presses on the 
cords in your voice box and sets them to trembling, or vibrating 
like violin strings. A bird sings in the same way. Now watch the 
kettle. The kettle is full of water and air. Don’t forget the air. 
When the water begins to boil it turns into vapor, or water gas, by 
exploding into bubbles. Vapor needs more room than water. So 
the first thing the vapor in the kettle does is to force the air out 
through the spout of the kettle. That is just like the narrow opening 
in your throat. Then the vapor keeps coming out in such rapid little 
explosions that the kettle vibrates. That makes the singing. Some¬ 
times it “sings,” or vibrates, so forcibly, that the lid of the kettle 
dances, keeping time like castanets. 

WATER AND A DUCK’S BACK 

What is quite so wretched looking as a wet hen? She is drenched 
by a hard rain just as quickly as you are. But you never saw a wet 
duck, did you? Yet a duck spends most of its life swimming in 
ponds. It dives for food and comes up as dry as bone. The feathers 
do not account for this, for the duck’s feathers are not so very different 
from the chicken’s. The secret of it is that the duck’s feathers are 
oiled. There is an oil-making gland on the duck’s back near the 


376 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


tail. The duck spreads a film of this oil all over the surface of its 
feathers. Now oil and water will not mix, so the water cannot get 
through this oil to wet the duck’s feathers. Besides, the oil slips 
past the water, making swimming easier. The next time you go 
swimming oil your back and the water will roll from it just as it does 
from a duck’s back. 

WHY FROZEN WATER BURSTS PIPES 

Nearly everything we know is expanded or swollen by heat, 
and contracted or shrunken by cold. But water is queer. It’s 
particles huddle closest together, and fill the smallest amount of 
space when in a liquid state. And it is expanded by both heat and 
cold. When heated to the boiling point and turned into vapor it 
takes up the most space. Steam confined in a boiler bursts iron 
w r alls, if it can get out in no other way. So in freezing, water expands 
to a larger bulk. That is why ice floats in water. If the water 
happens to freeze in a pipe, where there is no room for it to expand, 
it bursts the pipe. Some people think the thawing bursts the pipe, 
but the thawing only shows us the places where the frost burst it. 
You know a quiet pond freezes more quickly than a running stream. 
One way to keep your pipes from bursting in zero weather, is to open 
a faucet a little way. That keeps the water flowing so it is less likely 
to freeze. 


WHY WE ARE TANNED BY THE SUN 

“To tan” has two meanings. One is to turn anything a yellowish- 
brown color. The other meaning is to toughen and harden skins 
into leather. In the making of leather, both the toughening and the 
coloring are results of the processes of tanning. So it seems to be 
in the case of exposure of our skins to a great deal of hot sunshine. 
When a city child, who has lived in the house and in shaded streets, 
goes on a vacation to a farm or the seashore in mid-summer, the first 
effect of the exposure to sun rays is burning of the tender skin. This 
would not do at all, for burned skin blisters and peels. Different 
things in our bodies always rush to any injured parts to heal and 
protect them. A dark surface absorbs heat better than a light one. 
So to protect the skin from the heat, a dark pigment or paint is formed 
by blood cells and sunbeams acting together. This not only darkens 
the skin but toughens it, too. Our skins are really “tanned” some- 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


377 


thing like leather. Do you see why brown and black people are 
natives of hot countries "where there is much sunshine, while the 
fairest nations of the white race live in cold, northern countries where 
there is the least sunlight? 

WHY AND HOW WE GO TO SLEEP 

“Why do we go to sleep?” That is what the little “why” boy 
asked his mama. 

“Because we are sleepy.” 

“Why do we get sleepy?” 

“Because we are tired.” 

“But why do we get tired?” 

“Oh, dear!” The little boy’s mama said she never knew such 
a tiresome child for asking questions. He made her so tired she was 
sleepy. Now what had happened to her? 

We all have two kinds of nerves. One kind makes us feel, see, 
hear, touch and taste. Their tiny, sensitive ends come to the sur¬ 
face all over us, and telegraph sensations to the brain. The brain 
telegraphs to the nerves of motion to make the body do things. 
When they are used all day long, these sensation and motor nerves 
get tired of sending messages. The brain gets tired of receiving them 
and sending orders. The muscles and bones of the body get tired 
of carrying out these orders. 

You see, everything is made tired, or worn out by use—just 
as your shoes are. You have to throw a pair of tired-out shoes away. 
You cannot do that with your body. But it will make itself as good 
as new, if you give it a rest every so often. In sleep the wearing out 
is stopped. The nerves and brain—which is a big bundle of nerves, 
a switch-board for “central”—the muscles and bones all stop working. 
The heart, lungs, stomach, and all food-making organs, go right on 
working, although not as rapidly as when we are awake. The fires 
of life burn low. So the day’s waste is made up, and we awake 
rested. 

While grown people rest when asleep, children both rest and do 
most of their growing. Children need more sleep than grown people. 
Children who have too little sleep are apt to be small and weak, and 
not as bright in their minds as they might be. But how do we go 
to sleep? 

By shutting all the little doors to the brain. Nature begins it. 
At the end of a day, we do not feel, hear or see as keenly as when we 


378 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


are fresh in the morning. The nerves do not carry messages as 
rapidly, nor the brain or body act as quickly. Then we help nature. 
We undress and lie down in the dark. We protect all the little surface 
nerves from sensations—try to give them no messages to carry. We 
shut our eyes for the same reason, and we make the house quiet to 
keep sounds from knocking at our ears. With no “ringing up” on 
the switch-board, much of the blood leaves the brain. The heart 
and lungs slow down, the stomach will not need food-fuel for twelve 
hours or more. So we go to sleep. Now some little “why” boy is 
sure to ask; 

“ Where do we go when we go to sleep?” 

We don’t go anywhere. When we dream we go to places, it is 
because the outside world isn’t quite shut out, or an overloaded 
stomach telegraphs trouble to the brain. We aren’t as fast asleep 
as we should be when we dream. The best kind of sleep is w T hen we 
are all there and don’t know it. 

THE AGES OF ANIMALS 

No one knows exactly how long animals live in a wild state, 
but records have been kept of animals that have been tamed by 
men. And scientists are able to come very close to the ages of wild 
animals by examining the teeth, bones and other parts of the body. 
Turtles, toads, crocodiles and many reptiles, all cold-blooded animals, 
have the longest life of land animals, some living up to three hundred 
years. The elephant is thought to live about one hundred years. 
Whales live five hundred years, and scientists think some may live 
to be a thousand years old. Domesticated animals are short lived. 
A dog is old at twelve, and dies at fifteen. A few have been known 
to live, but blind and feeble, until twenty. Cats live from thirteen 
to fifteen years. The wild cats, or lions, live to be forty. Horses 
and cows are old at twenty, and die before thirty. Of all birds the 
little singers are the shortest lived, living from three to fifteen years. 
This may be because of the many accidents that cut their lives short, 
for pet canaries have lived for tw T enty-five years. The crow, swan 
and eagle often live to be a hundred With a few exceptions, the 
rule seems to be that the largest animals of all classes, those of which 
there are few r est in number, live the longest. The same rule seems 
to apply to plants. There w r ere big trees in California, and whales 
in the ocean, that were hundreds of years old when Columbus dis~ 
covered America, 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


37 !) 


WHY BEARS LIVE ALL WINTER WITHOUT EATING 

One-half of the answer to this is: As bears sleep most of the 
time in a warm place in winter, they do not need as much food as 
when they are active. The other half is that they eat themselves. 
In the summer months they eat greedily, a great deal more than they 
need at the time. This extra food is stored up in their bodies in 
thick layers of fat. This fat keeps the sleeping bear warm. Food 
is fuel. As he is very warm in his blanket of fat, a bear needs less 
food. And, gradually, he eats the blanket. The fat is absorbed 
into the blood to feed all the other tissues of the body. In the spring 
the bear comes out thin and poor. 

Many other animals hibernate in the winter. Snakes store up 
fat to live on. You see there is little food for them in winter, so 
Nature taught them how to stock up their internal pantry shelves 
for hard times. When you are sick and can not eat as much as usual, 
you, too, live partly on the fat stored in the body. That is why you 
become very thin. And that is why, when you begin to get well, 
you are as “hungry as a bear.” 

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE? 

That is a hard question! But it isn’t a foolish one, by any 
means. It was only about fifty years ago that a great English 
scientist named John Tyndall worked out the puzzle. See if you can 
understand the answer. 

The sun is 92,897,000 miles away from us, but the sun’s white 
rays come to us straight, with no interference, until they strike the 
earth’s atmosphere about forty miles above our heads. This atmos¬ 
phere absorbs, or swallows up the light rays. If this were all the 
sun should look to us like a great star, and the sky at midday should 
appear dark and clear as on a winter night, with all the stars shining. 
Long ago scientists noticed that on very high snow-covered moun¬ 
tains, and out in mid-ocean where the air is purest, the sky is darker 
than it is over low land. The air near the earth, that is heavy enough 
to be breathed, is full of fine earth-dust. These dust particles catch 
and break up the light rays, just as a glass prism, or a diamond breaks 
a ray of white light up into rainbow colors. Now if all those rays 
could get through to us we would have a rainbow sky. But the 
impurities are of just the right size and number to throw back all 
the other colored rays, and to reflect the blue rays to us. 


380 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


So of all the sun’s light, we get only the blue rays reflected from 
the little dust mirrors in our own atmosphere. A blue sky is the 
very nicest kind of sky for us. If there were no impurities, or dust, 
in our atmosphere it would be so dark we couldn’t see very well. 
And if the impurities were of a different size or number, we would 
have a red or a yellow sky. Either one would dazzle our eyes. Now, 
when our sky is gray it is because the earth dust is coated with vapor 
or water dust, making clouds. Vapor is not as good a reflector as 
dust, so we do not get our blue light until after the vapor has con¬ 
densed and fallen in rain. (See Sun, Tyndall, Spectrum.) 

WHY THE SKY IS MANY COLORED AT SUNSET 

You can’t imagine a rainbow-colored sky! 

Oh, yes, you can. Haven’t you seen the brilliant colors of 
sunset? When the sun is above us, at noon, the light rays come 
straight down to us, or at a slight slant through the atmosphere. 
Then we get the reflection of the blue rays, only. But when the 
light comes to us in level lines along the surface of the earth at sun¬ 
set, the rays pass through a thicker layer of smoke and dust. From 
more impurities of more varied sizes and greater densities, the red 
and yellow rays are reflected, as 'well as the blue. Some dust particles 
combine reflections, giving us green, orange and violet lights. At 
sunrise the same thing happens, but, for some reason, the colors of 
dawn are usually more delicate and transparent than at twilight. 

Sometimes the amount of dust in the air is greater than at others. 
Volcanoes have been known to throw columns of ashes or volcanic 
dust into the sky as high as two miles. This dust is carried on the 
upper currents of air to great distances. It is even thought that 
it sometimes forms a belt entirely around the earth. After days 
and weeks all this great volume of volcanic dust settles, or is washed 
out of the air by rain. But while it is in the air we have a series 
of very fine sunsets and sunrises. 

SOUND WAVES AND THE PHONOGRAPH 

You remember how, in the telephone, the sound waves made 
by the voice are caught on an iron disc, or drumhead, and sent on 
to the wire. Now phone means sound and graph means write. In 
the phonograph the sound waves of the voice are caught by a drum¬ 
head and made to shake a needle that moves over a rolling cylinder, 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


381 


and scratches or writes upon it. Thus a record is made of a dictated 
letter, a speech or a song. When the cylinder is put into the machine 
and the needle made to move over the same marks the sounds recorded 
on the roll are repeated. The sounds are magnified in a trumpet, 
and so made loud enough to be heard by our ears. On a phonograph 
record-roll you can see the faint, irregular line made by the needle. 
A given sound always makes the same kind of mark. Of course, 
then, it must always give back the same sound. 

HOW DOES SOAP TAKE OUT DIRT? 

You can find out the answer to this by making a little soap in 
a greasy frying pan. Put a very little water and a big spoon full 
of washing (lump) soda in it, and let them boil together. You get 
a thick soft soap. The grease is broken up and mixed with the soda, 
and the frying pan is cleaned. Our grandmothers made great kettles 
full of soft, brown soap by boiling waste fat and wood ashes lye 
together. Lye, soda and potash, or what are called the alkalies, 
break up and dissolve the fats. Our skin makes a kind of oil all 
the time. This oil gathers dust, and makes us and our clothing dirty. 
We can cut this dusty oil from the skin with soda or some other 
alkali, dissolved in water. But an alkali is so strong it dries out and 
breaks up the skin as well as the oil. So we weaken the alkali with 
other oils or fats first. There is still an excess of alkali in the soap 
called “ free” alkali, enough to take up the oil in our skins and cloth¬ 
ing without injuring them. Of course, with the oil comes the dust. 
If your face smarts or shines after a scrubbing with soap, it is probably 
because the kind of soap you use has too much “free” alkali in it 
for your skin. Or the water is hard and does not dissolve the soap 
properly. As waters and surfaces to be cleaned differ so much, 
many kinds of soap are necessary. 

WHAT IS THE HORIZON? 

The horizon is the boundary of as much of the world as you 
can see from the place in which you happen to be standing. If you 
are on the ocean, or on a flat plain with no houses or trees to break 
the line, the horizon is a perfect circle, because you are able to see 
the same distance in every direction. The horizon, then, is the 
circular line where the earth and sky seem to meet. The distance 
that can be swept by the human eye, depends upon the height from 


382 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


which the view of the world is taken. On the sea, or a plain, a man 
with perfect eyes can see a distance of about two and a half miles 
on a clear day. That is, he sees across a circle of five miles, or around 
a horizon of about sixteen miles. From a sky-scraper tower, two 
hundred feet above the earth, the same man can see nearly nineteen 
miles. From a mountain five thousand two hundred and eighty 
feet, or a mile high, he can see nearly one hundred miles in every 
direction. We can see farther by going up higher, because the earth 
is a sphere, or globe. The surface of it slopes away on all sides. At 
a certain distance, on a level, the slope falls below our vision. As 
we go higher, farther limits come up within range of our eyes. 

WHY THE EDGES OF COINS ARE “MILLED” 

Have you a silver dollar, or a gold piece? Your papa has. Per¬ 
haps you never noticed that coins are cut in regular up and down 
grooves around the edges. This is called “milling,” because it is 
done in the government money mill, or mint. Coins have been 
milled for so long a time by all countries, that no one knows just 
when the practice was begun. But the reason for it is very well 
known. Dishonest people used to shave away thin layers from the 
edges of coins. When the edges were smooth this could be done, 
and no one could detect the theft unless the coins were weighed. 
When the edge is grooved or milled, stealing in that way is not so 
easy. New grooves, as regularly spaced and as evenly cut, could 
not be made again, except by melting and re-minting the coin. Copper 
pennies and nickels are not milled, for the metal in them is not valuable 
enough to pay any one for the trouble of shaving the edges aw T ay. 

HOW TRAINS RUN AROUND CURVES 

The first law of motion, as you learned in what keeps a bicycle 
upright, is that a moving thing goes forward in a straight line. If 
the direction of the moving is changed some other force must come 
into play. What force will interfere with a forward movement on 
a level? Why a rise in the level. It is harder to go up hill. To make 
a little hill the outside rail is raised quite a little higher than the 
inside rail. The height to which the outside rail needs to be raised 
depends upon the sharpness of the curve, and the speed at which 
trains are expected to run around it. Around very sharp curves 
trains must “slow down” to keep from running off the track. When 
you run around a corner, or ride around one on a bicycle, you lean 


HOW AND WHY OP COMMON THINGS 


383 


toward the inside of the curve. Horses do this, too. Just take notice 
and see if this isn’t true. 

WHERE OIL COMES FROM 

Oil is made by animals and plants. The flesh of all animals 
contain fat that is easily melted into oils. Mutton fat or tallow is 
so waxy that it hardens and makes good candles. Whales have a 
great blanket or thick layer of fat that men used to melt and burn 
in lamps. Codfish give a very pure, rich oil that is valuable as a food- 
medicine for building up sick people. Among plants the olive is 
best known for its oil, but peanuts, other nuts, cotton seed, castor 
beans, and many other fruits and seeds are rich in oil. When men 
first found petroleum far down in the earth, they called it mineral, 
rock or coal oil. Now we know that there is no such thing as mineral 
oil. We know that coal and coal oil are both vegetable products. 
The plants that were pressed into coal beds contained oil, probably 
in the fruits or seeds. Under pressure, the oil escaped from the woody 
cells, and collected into pockets or wells in the earth in enormous 
quantities. Much of the oil in the earth has been vaporized, or 
turned into gas. This accounts for natural gas. 

WHAT KEEPS A BICYCLE UPRIGHT 

Motion. A bicycle keeps upright only as long as it is moving. 
When standing still it has to be supported against something. It 
seems rather odd that the bicycle wasn’t invented long before our 
day. Newton, the same great thinker who discovered the law of 
falling bodies, and separated rays of white light into the colors of 
the spectrum, also discovered certain laws of motion. Of all the laws 
of motion he placed this first: “A moving thing will move at a constant 
speed, and in the same straight line forever, unless some other force 
stops it.” Every child who rolls a hoop uses that law. He sets the 
hoop moving in a straight line. The earth pulls the hoop over as 
soon as the force that set it in motion becomes weaker than the 
earth’s pull. In the bicycle, the rider constantly applies new force 
to the wheels through the pedals, and so keeps the wheels rolling 
forward. 

THE MAN IN THE MOON 

There is no man in the moon, for the moon is an airless, water¬ 
less, dead world. There is no life on it at all. And if there were 
men there, the moon is so far away we could not see them. Besides, 


384 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


the man’s face that we sometimes see, covers the whole, round, bright 
surface in a good-natured smile thousands of miles wide. That 
would be a giant! This face is made by the shadows of great moun¬ 
tain ranges, by sunken beds of dried up oceans, and the deep holes 
of dead volcano craters. It is curious that these hills and holes and 
shadows should be so placed as to look like a vast face. If you look 
at the moon through a telescope, or even an opera or field glass, the 
face disappears, but the things that cause the shines and shadows 
come out very plainly. Often you can see the mountains on the 
moon best when it is not full. They stand out, making a jagged or 
wavy line along the inner edge of the crescent. Astronomers have 
made maps of the surface of the moon. Knowing the size of the 
moon, they are able to measure the heights of the mountains by the 
lengths of the shadows that are cast by them. 

WHY BIRDS MOULT 

Birds moult, or drop their feathers and grow new ones once a 
year or, in some kinds twice, for the same reason that you buy new 
suits of clothes. Feathers wear out. They get dirty and ragged 
from hard wear in all kinds of weather. Then they do not protect 
the bird’s skin as well, keep him as healthy, or present as smooth a 
surface against the wind for flying. All animals moult, some only 
while growing, some at changing seasons. Fur-bearing animals, 
horses, cattle, dogs and cats grow thicker coats in winter and shed 
them in the spring. Snakes, crabs, lobsters and other animals shed 
their skins because they outgrow them. You shed your skin, but 
a little at a time, in tiny scales. You can see dead skin roll up when 
you rub yourself hard after a bath. You shed your hair, too. Old 
hairs fall out nearly every day, and new baby hairs grow in their 
places. 

WHY PEOPLE BECOME SEASICK 

As human beings are land animals their bodies are fitted to live 
on a stationary base. The sea is always in motion. Anything float¬ 
ing on a big body of water is constantly lifted and let fall and tilted 
at many angles. This disturbs the nerves of the eyes and the balance 
or equilib-iium of the body, producing dizziness in the head and 
“sickness” in the stomach. It is probable, too, that the contents 
of the stomach are more or less shaken by the motion. Many people 
become just as “seasick” on rocking railway trains as on boats. And 






Here are views of Emperor Frederick’s park, which the public is not allowed to enter, 
and of a portion of a village both of which were taken by “pigeon photography.” 


This shows how the camera is strapped to the breast of the feathered artist. On the 
right is the dovecote on wheels. His owner sleeps below. 


TAKES PICTURES 


T N Germany car- 
rier pigeons have 
been used to get 
“birdseye” views 
with cameras. The 
camera is strapped 
to the bird’s breast, 
and is made so that 
it points downward 
when the little pho¬ 
tographer is on the 
wing and catches 
whatever he may be 
passing over when 


ON THE WING 


the film is exposed. 
An automatic (self- 
working) device, 
wound up like a 
watch, exposes a 
new film at regular 
intervals. From the 
two examples given 
at the bottom of 
this page you can 
see how the world 
looks to a bird or to 
a man in a flying 
machine. 





















































HOW AND WHY OP COMMON THINGS 


385 


some cannot even bear the motions of swings and hammocks. But 
people differ very widely. Some are never made sick at sea, and 
others never get over the tendency, no matter how much they travel. 
Children rarely suffer from this malady. That is probably because 
they tumble about more than do grown people. It doesn’t bother 
an active boy much to have his stomach rocked, or even turned 
upside down. 

HOW A CAMERA TAKES A PHOTOGRAPH 

Of all machines a camera is the Chinaman. It does everything 
upside down, wrong side before, and right side out. Then the eyes 
in our heads are Chinamen, too, for they are Nature’s cameras. 
Camera means a room, or chamber. Men who are very exact say 
camera obscura. That means dark room. The camera and the eye 
each have a dark room. In front of this dark room is a small, clear, 
thick window, or lens, for letting the light rays through. At the back 
of the room is a screen on which the picture is thrown, just as a screen 
is used in the moving-picture show. Look at the. lenses of grand¬ 
mother’s spectacles. They are oval bits of glass, thickest in the 
middle. Through them grandmother can see the widest landscape 
and the highest sky. The light rays, falling at widely separated 
angles, almost meet in the tiny lenses. As they pass through the 
lenses they do meet in points just behind them. The rays cross each 
other where they meet, and spread again. But as each ray travels 
straight, the upper rays fall below, after crossing, and the lower rays 
rise to the top. That turns the picture upside down on the screen 
at the back of the dark r'oom. Look into a camera and you will see 
the picture upside down. A photographer just turns the plate around. 
In your eye the optic nerve, or the brain, turns the picture right 
side up. 

But how is this topsy-turvy picture fixed on the screen at all? 
The screen in the camera is a glass plate, or a gelatine film. This 
is coated with a sensitive chemical that is acted upon by light rays. 
Every gradation of light, from pure white to dead black, acts upon 
it differently. Rays from a white collar destroy this chemical; black 
cloth, giving off no rays, do not act upon it at all. The picture you 
get is not only upside down, it is a negative. Negative means “no.” 
That is, it is the “no” or the very opposite of the thing pictured. 
In the negative, the white collar appears black. But the negative 
prints a positive or “yes” on a dark paper sensitive to light rays. 


386 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


Sunlight, falling through the negative, bleaches the paper back of 
it to a true picture of the original subject. A photograph is made 
in the same way as the picture in your eye. Both are made by the 
light of the sun. 

DON’T PUT BOILING WATER IN A COLD GLASS 

If you do—crack! You may break it. If the glass is thick it 
is almost sure to crack. The thinner the glass the smaller the risk. 
That’s odd, isn’t it? Why is this? Heat expands. When a thing 
expands it needs more room. Glass expands readily. If it is thin 
the heat goes through quickly, expanding all parts alike. But when 
the glass is thick, the inside particles expand before the outside becomes 
heated. So the cold outside layer has to crack to give the warm 
inside layer room to expand. The same thing happens, sometimes, 
in pouring hot coffee into a cold cup. If you put a silver spoon in 
your glass or cup it will be less liable to be cracked. The metal attracts 
the first heat, and allows the glass or china time to heat more slowly 
and evenly. And a glass or china cup is apt to be cracked if it is 
very hot and you put ice water in it. Cold contracts or shrinks the 
glass. So the inside shrinks while the outside is still stretched. 

WHY SALT MAKES US THIRSTY 

We need salt in our bodies to keep us healthy. Our blood is 
just about as salty as sea-water. Isn’t that curious when we think 
that animal life began on our earth in the sea? Now salt melts or 
dissolves easily in water, and in our blood, until they become brine. 
If we eat salty food the body soon gets too much salt in it. The 
only way to get rid of it is to dilute it with water. When the body 
needs water it very promptly calls for it. We say we feel thirsty. 
Salt isn’t the only thing that makes us thirsty. Sugar, and many 
strong, hot spices heat the blood and need to be diluted with water 
and washed out. 

WHAT MAKES A LOCOMOTIVE GO? 

An engineer would tell you that a locomotive is driven by steam 
power. He understands what that means, but you don’t. So that 
is no answer for you. You know what steam is, of course. It is 
vapor, or water turned to a gas by heat. In turning into gas it 
expands, or takes up more room. What a fuss steam makes to get 
out of a teakettle! If you cork the spout, the steam pushes up the 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


387 


lid—fairly makes it dance. So you can easily see that steam is strong 
enough to do a good deal of work. It is stronger than you imagine. 
If you seal a kettle air-tight, so no steam can escape, and let the water 
go right on boiling, by and by the kettle bursts into little pieces. 
That gas must have more room. Each tiny atom of that gas is a little 
hammer that flies around and beats on the walls that hold it in. It 
hasn’t much power alone, but when there are billions of these hammers, 
all battering at one wall, something has to give way. 

An iron boiler is so strong that in it steam or water gas can be 
made under pressure, or crowded into a very small space. This 
crowding, of course, increases its explosive, or expansive, power 
enormously. Then, if a very small opening is left for the gas to 
escape, it will spend the force of all the steam in the boiler at that 
opening instead of on the walls. All the gas wants, you see, is to 
get out where there is more room. 

“Well, you may go out,” says the engine builder. “But in 
going out you must push this piston rod that plugs up the opening 
like a cork.” That is just what it does. The steam pushes the piston 
rod with the force of all the steam in the boiler, like a great hammer, 
just as you drive a nail in a board. The piston rod pushing forward 
and falling back as regularly as the pendulum of a clock, turns the 
drive wheel. And that is what the engineer means when he says 
a locomotive is “driven” 1 by steam. 

WHAT MAKES AN AUTOMOBILE GO? 

Not steam. An automobile couldn’t carry a big iron boiler 
around. One might say that an automobile is driven by canned 
sunshine, or gasoline. Gasoline is a refined preparation of petroleum 
that readily turns into an explosive gas. Ages and ages ago the sun 
helped make petroleum or vegetable oil, as it helped the plants to 
grow that turned into coal. 

Like steam or water-gas, gasoline-gas pushes things to get out, 
if shut up. It can be let out in such a way as to push machinery. 
A very little at a time can be made by feeding a few drops to an 
electric spark. The spark burns the gasoline that is, makes it so hot 
it expands into gas. Every time the electric spark passes the jet of 
gasoline a little explosion takes place. As the gas pushes to escape, 
it pushes the machinery connected with the wheels. So an automo¬ 
bile is driven by continuous small explosions. When it is stopped 
the gas-making is stopped, too, and there is no waste of power. And 


388 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


a big tank or boiler is not needed to store the gas. It is made as it 
is needed, and used up as fast as it is made. When an automobile 
passes you, you can hear these little explosions that make it go. 

WHY WASHINGTON’S EYES FOLLOW US 

There is one picture of Washington in which the eyes follow any 
one who looks at it. It is the portrait painted by an American artist, 
Gilbert Stuart. The eyes are very large and mild and noble. They 
seem to look at every boy and tell him to be brave and unselfish 
and to love his country. That is one reason why we think this the 
best of all portraits of the father - of our country. The face, and 
especially the eyes, speak so plainly the character of the man. The 
secret of the eyes is that Washington and the artist were looking 
straight at each other when the eyes were painted. Eyes that follow 
the gazer are to be found in “Mona Lisa” and many of the world’s 
greatest paintings. They are to be found in good photographs, too. 
If the sitter looks straight into the camera, his eyes in the photo¬ 
graph will gaze back, at any angle, into the eyes of any one who 
looks at it. 


WHAT RINGS THE DOOR BELL? 

A current of electricity running around a wire, rings the door 
bell. Then why doesn’t it ring all the time? For the same reason 
that an electric lamp doesn’t give light all the time. In both cases 
we connect and break the current of electricity. The carbon fila¬ 
ment in the lamp runs into platinum wires in the neck. When you 
push in a button or turn a thumb key, the platinum wires are made 
to touch the copper ware that carries the electric current into the 
house. The current flows around the carbon filament completing 
the circuit, and we get a light. So, when you press the button of 
a door bell a bit of metal under the button presses on the wire that, 
all the time, carries the electric current to that point. The current 
instantly leaps along the rest of the wire to the bell, and rings it. 
In the case of the lamp the current comes from a distant power house 
on wires, under the streets, between the walls and through the tubing 
of the electric light fixtures. In the case of the door bell, each house 
has its own little power plant in the basement, or on a closet shelf. 
It is an electric battery made with chemicals in a jar. Any careful, 
clever boy can make such a battery, and explain to a school just 
how a door bell is made to ring. 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


389 


WHAT MAKES THE MUSIC IN A PIPE ORGAN? 

The pipe organ in the church is a wind instrument. Although 
it has a keyboard, and is played like a piano or parlor organ by strik¬ 
ing the keys, the music is not made in the same way. In a piano 
the striking of a key brings a hammer down on a wire. The wire 
vibrates, or trembles. \ ibrations produce sound, no matter how 
they are made—by the beating of the bee’s wings, the vapor explo¬ 
sions in a teakettle, the blow of a hammer, or by the passage of air 
through a crevice or a pipe. When an organist strikes a key, he opens 
a valve that admits a column of air to one of the pipes. This column 
of air vibrates in the pipe and makes sound waves. The rate or 
rapidity with which the air vibrates determines the musical tone. 
A bird’s wings, vibrating slowly, flap; a bee’s wings, moving rapidly, 
hum. In the pipe organ the rapidity of the vibrations in the different 
pipes depends upon their varying lengths. The air in a pipe eight 
feet high vibrates twice as fast as the air in a pipe sixteen feet high. 
So the musical note made by the longer pipe is an octave or eight 
notes below the one made by the shorter pipe. The organ pipe is 
of special shape, with a tongue at one end to throw the air into vibra¬ 
tion as it enters the column. This tongue is of various materials 
and shapes to give quality to the tone. But the pitch—the highness 
or lowness—is decided by the length of the pipe. 

WHAT IS A MIRAGE? 

Every child who has read stories of the desert, knows that some¬ 
times travellers over the burning sands often think they see, in the 
distance, one of those green places with water and palm trees that 
are called oases. They urge their camels forward only to see the 
vision fade before their eyes. The animals are not deceived. When 
near a real oasis they smell the water and hurry of their own accord. 
Such an unreal appearance is called a mirage. But how is it made? 
And why does it disappear? 

It helps in understanding a great many things to know the 
meaning of their names. Mirage comes from the same old Latin words 
from which we get both mirror, a looking-glass, and miracle, a wonder 
and a mystery. So a mirage is a reflection of some unseen but very 
real object, sent back from an upper layer of air that, in a way that 
was long a mystery, acts as a looking-glass. 

Many things in nature readily become mirrors. A sheet of quiet 
water reflects an inverted image of all the things along its banks. 


390 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


Polished metals and woods, painted surfaces, even glossy leaves 
reflect. The moon is quite dead and cold. It has no light of its 
own, but shines by the reflected light of the sun. Even a layer of 
air may become a mirror. This is the way in which it does so over 
the desert. As a rule, the air nearest the surface of the earth is 
heaviest, and light rays from the earth pass upwards through gradually 
lightening air without being stopped. Over hot, sandy deserts the 
layer of air on the earth becomes more heated and therefore lighter 
than air that is some distance above. Light rays are stopped by 
this denser air layer and reflected back. And just as a tree growing 
on the bank of a pond is reflected upside down in the water, so a 
reflection, or mirage, is often inverted in the sky. But sometimes 
it seems to be lifted and merely reversed as your face is in a mirror. 
Mirages occur over dry plains and also over the far northern oceans. 
One case is on record in which the entire north coast of France was 
reflected to a sea-coast town in England, a distance of fifty miles 
across the English channel. So you may readily believe that the 
mirage in the desert is the reflection of an oasis that may be a day’s 
journey distant. 


DAY AND NIGHT 

Why we have both day and night following each other regularly 
once every twenty-four hours, is supposed to be very hard to under¬ 
stand. It isn’t explained to children in school until they get their 
big geographies in the sixth grade. But it’s just as easy as anything. 

You see the sun rise and set every day. In the evening the 
sun goes down the western sky—or seems to go down—until it is 
out of sight. Then it is dark. In the morning the sun seems to 
rise in the east, and we have day. The sun has motions of its own, 
but in relation to our earth it stands still. It is the earth that turns 
away from the sun in the evening, and toward it in the morning. 
Push a long hatpin through an orange. Now hold the orange by 
both ends of the pin, and level with the flame of a lamp. Let’s play 
the lamp is the sun, and the orange the earth. You know, of course, 
that the earth is a very big, nearly round ball. It is about eight 
thousand miles through the middle and over twenty-five thousand 
miles around. The lamp stands still, and keeps right on shining. 
But its light can shine only on the side of the orange-earth that 
happens to be turned toward it. It couldn't reach around and shine 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


391 


on the other side, and it couldn t shine through the solid earth now 
could it? 

Turn the orange-earth over and over, slowly, on the hatpin. 
That is the way the earth turns. The sun is always shining on one- 
half of it, but the light half is constantly changing. As the earth 
always turns eastward toward the sun, the sun seems to travel west¬ 
ward. It takes just one day, or twenty-four hours, for the earth to 
turn over once, and give all parts day and night. So, when it is noon 
in the United States the little Chinese boys and girls on the dark 
side of the earth are fast asleep. And when they are hurrying to 
school very likely we are undressing to go to bed. 

WHERE THE DATE CHANGES 

This is a little harder to understand. Perhaps you don’t know 
that the date does change—but if it didn’t, then when it is Sunday 
on one side of the earth it would be Monday on the other. 

Turn your orange-earth over slowly and watch the light rays 
strike one side after another. Remember, day is always beginning 
somewhere. It is always noon somewhere, always night, and it takes 
twenty-four hours for any one spot on the earth to go through all 
the changes of morning, noon, evening, midnight. 

Since this is true, the people of the great trading nations had 
to agree on a place where a new day should begin for everybody. 
You see they needed to date letters and telegrams, newspapers and 
business papers of all sorts. It wouldn’t do to have a date-changing 
line pass through a big city, or even through a country where many 
people lived. For it would make no end of trouble to say it was 
Monday on the west side of a busy street, and Tuesday on the east 
side. A place was chosen to run a date line north and south, away 
out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

Cut a line on the skin of the orange-earth from where the hat¬ 
pin goes in, at one end, to where it goes out at the other. We’ll 
call that the date line; although, as a matter of fact, the real date¬ 
line is not straight up and down, but zigzags about among islands. 
It goes half way around the earth, up and down the very widest 
ocean. Now continue the line around, dividing the earth into two 
halves. On the line exactly opposite the date line stands London, 
the greatest trading and banking city on earth, with 6,000,000 people 
living in it. There, time and dates are very important, so the trad¬ 
ing nations agreed to keep London time—that is, to date everything 


392 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


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side of the earth, in mid-ocean. 

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journey takes twenty-four hours, 
you get back to London at noon 
the next day. Now, go around 
the earth eastward, travelling 
just as fast as before, against the 
sun, or in the same direction as 
the earth. You will meet the 
sun at noon, when half way 
around, and in half a day, or 
twelve hours. You pass the sun 
and meet it again at noon, in 
London, twelve hours later. As 
you had noon-time twice in 
twenty-four hours, you must 
count Monday twice. So you 
lose a day, or have the same day 
twice in going around the earth 
eastward, and gain or skip a 
day in going around westward. 
When crossing the date line, 
ships going eastward count the 
same day twice; westward going 
ships skip a day to keep their 
dating correct with London time. 

HOW THE SPECTRUM EX¬ 
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HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


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that no one else thought much about. One day he saw a sunbeam 
shining through a round hole in a shutter into a dark room. The 
beam made a golden road to the opposite wall. There it ended in 
a spot of light. When Newton saw this, he thought: 

I wonder what would happen if I were to catch that sunbeam, 
and make it pass through this triangular bar of glass?” 

Light goes right through a pane of glass, you know. But because 
of the unequal thickness of the triangle or prism, the beam went 
through it in a curious way. The ray went to the middle of the 
prism straight and white. There it was bent at the angle of the 
prism’s sides and spread out like a fan. The round spot on the wall 
was gone. In its place was a narrow panel, in seven color bands like 
a thin slice cut across a rainbow. And the colors were arranged in the 
same order as in a rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. 

Why do you suppose he called this a spectrum? Specter means 
an image of light, a heavenly vision. He stood in wonder and awe 
at the unearthly beauty of those color bands of light. And he hoped 
that he had found a key of light to unlock some of the secrets of 
the far-away sun and stars. Newton caught starbeams and rays 
from white hot iron. And he tried the effect of burning the dust 
of lime, salt, iron and other minerals. He discovered that when 
salt (sodium) w r as burned the yellow band of the spectrum came 
out very bright. 

When you boys and girls are hunting a hidden object you know 
what it is to get “warm.” Newton and other scientists who experi¬ 
mented with the spectrum, knew they were “warm,” or very close 
to the secret of yellow when sodium, and nothing else in nature, 
always made the yellow band blaze brighter. In this way they 
determined that there is sodium in the sun and the stars, just as 
there is in our own earth. You see the key of light began to turn 
in the lock. After long experimenting it was discovered just what 
element makes each and every color. Everything that was found 
by the spectrum to exist in our world was found to exist in others. 

The spectrum revealed not only the materials of other worlds 
and furnished a test by which the elements could be detected, but 
it proved the laws by which light is governed. Across the color 
bands of the spectrum are many dark lines in which no light or color 
appears. These are caused by light rays crossing and putting each 
other out. The only way in which they can do this is by travelling 
in waves or ripples, just as air and water and sound travel. f 


394 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


It is by spectra-analysis that not only the stars, but the things 
of which the earth is made today are studied. The telescope, the 
spectroscope and the camera are united in wonderful ways, to give 
us true stories and pictures and explanations of the stars. Astron¬ 
omers can tell us by these, what a star is made of, whether it is coming 
toward or going from us, how rapidly it is moving and many other 
things. 

Isn’t it wonderful that we can catch a light ray from a star 
millions of miles away in a little glass prism, split it up into a band 
of seven colors, photograph that band and keep It for a record, and 
find out from these records that all the suns and stars are made of 
the same things as the dear home earth we live upon? (See Spec¬ 
trum, Spectroscopy.) 

A WORLD OF WONDERS IN A SOAP BUBBLE 

A soap bubble really makes one able to believe in worlds where 
fairies live. Like our world of land and water it is round. It floats 
in space. Although it is hollow, it is packed and crammed with 
beautiful mysteries. But mysteries and miracles and magic are 
usually just the working of natural laws that we do not understand. 

In the first place, the soap bubble is only a tiny, hot-air balloon 
with a skin of soapy water around it. The hot air is forced from 
your lungs when you blow. Hot air is expanded, so it takes less of 
it to fill a given space. Therefore it is lighter than cold air. In this 
little balloon the air inside is so much lighter and hotter than the 
air outside that it is able to hold up the water-film that forms the 
skin. Another thing that helps it float is this. If all the water was 
in one big drop, or even in several smaller drops, it would fall like 
rain. But the water is stretched and spread out very thin over a 
great deal of air. So it floats, just as a thin hollow iron ship floats 
on water, or a kite flies in the air. 

Now water alone cannot be stretched in that way. Soap has 
a much greater power of cohesion, or sticking-togetherness. Soap 
with glycerine, or a kind of mucilage in it, is still more cohesive than 
ordinary soap. See how easy it is to make lather, or a great many 
foam bubbles in soapy water. The soap bubble is round for the same 
reason that the earth is round. All the little particles of water cling 
together on all sides with the same force. The air pressure outside 
is the same on every part, and every part is being pulled toward 
its own center. It isn’t easy to believe that the smooth water-film 



F. E. COMPTON & CO. 


With a pipe, a straw and two rings, you can, with a little practice, blow all the bubbles you see here. You enclose 
the iiower in the bubble bv using the funnel as you would a pipe. One bubble is made inside 
another, and a third inside of that by blowing the first bubble, piercing it with 
the straw and then blowing the other bubble inside of it. 




























HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


395 


is made up of tiny separate molecules. But see the rainbow colors 
it reflects. A diamond cut in faces, catches white light rays and 
breaks them up in the same way. So the soap bubble would not 
be able to break up light rays, if it did not have millions and billions 
of little flat faces. 

If you watch a soap bubble closely you will see it sag and gather 
a drop on the underside. No sooner is it in the air than the earth 
tries to pull it down. Because of this pull the water on the upper 
parts slides down the slopes. That makes it heavier below. The 
heaviness drags it out of its perfect sphere shape. All this time 
the air inside .is growing cooler and is shrinking. The water-film 
shrinks to fit the air inside, and is pressed in by the outside air. 
When both are the same weight and temperature, the water skin 
makes the bubble heavier than the air it floats in, so it falls, just 
as an apple does. When the bubble touches the ground all the little 
molecules of water fall together, downward , and make one drop. 

You cannot believe the glittering little fairy world is all in the 
soapy splash on the table, can you? 

WHY IS THE OCEAN SALT? 

There is no salt in fresh rain-water. River water tastes fresh, 
sea water salty. Yet the oceans are fed by the rivers that flow into 
them. Then where does the salt in the sea come from? 

When rain falls on the ground it soaks into the earth. In the 
earth are all sorts of minerals—salt, lime, magnesia, potash, sulphur, 
iron and many others. These are dissolved or melted and carried 
along by the water. Of all the minerals in the earth salt is most 
easily dissolved by water. So very often, we have salt springs. 
Rivers are fed by springs, and all of the minerals are in river water, 
but not enough so you can taste them. All the time this salt and 
other minerals are poured into the ocean by the rivers. When the 
sun takes vapor up into the rain clouds it takes only the water, 
leaving the minerals behind, just as lime is left in a teakettle. In 
this way the minerals in the sea, salt and everything else, slowly 
becomes greater in quantity as the centuries go by. About three 
and a half per cent of sea water is minerals, today. That is, if you 
put one hundred quarts of sea water in a tank and boil it until 
the water is all boiled away, you will have three and a half quarts 
of dry salt, magnesia, lime, potash and other minerals. The greatei 

part would be salt. 


39G 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


What would you think, then, of water in which there are from 
fifteen to twenty quarts of salt and other minerals in every hundred 
quarts of water? The water of our Great Salt Lake and of the Dead 
Sea is four or five times as salt as the ocean. Like the ocean, they 
have no outlets in rivers. So they keep all the minerals that come 
into them. After ages and ages they will lose all their water, dry 
up and leave great salt beds behind. Do you think that could ever 
happen to the big oceans? 

WHAT IS “HORSE POWER?” 

When James Watt invented the stationary steam engine, one of 
the difficulties he had was to be certain how large an engine was 
needed to do a given amount of work. He would get an order some¬ 
thing like this: “An engine is wanted to pump water from a mine. 
It must do the w^ork that is now done by twenty-four horses.” The 
thing he had to find out was just how much work one horse can do. 
He tested many horses until he found that the average force of the 
working horses then used, was just enough to raise thirty-three 
thousand pounds one foot high in one minute of time. Allowance 
also had to be made for friction, or rubbing of the parts of the 
machinery, and other things. Today horse-power in an engine is 
not calculated in that way. It refers to the size of the cylinder. 
A horse power now may mean a lift of sixty thousand pounds one 
foot high in one minute. 

HOW QUICKLY DO THINGS FALL? 

That depends. On the weight of it? No, indeed. You remember 
how Galileo, the great astronomer, dropped a one-pound and a ten 
pound cannon ball together from the leaning tower of Pisa? They 
struck the ground the same instant. The speed with which things 
drop depends upon the height from w r hich they fall. If you fall 
from the limb of an apple tree sixteen feet from the ground, you 
strike the ground in just one second. But if you fall from a church 
steeple three times as high, or forty-eight feet, you strike the ground 
in tw r o seconds. Every second a falling body gains thirty-two feet 
on the distance covered in the preceding second. You fall sixteen 
feet in the first second, forty-eight feet in the second, eighty feet 
in the. third, one hundred and twelve in the fourth and one hundred 
and forty-four in the fifth, or four hundred feet in less than a twentieth 
of a minute. This increase in speed, according to the height, is what - 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


397 


fnakes a long fall “hard.” The earth is struck with greater force. 
The gam in speed would be multiplied many times each second, 
instead of being added to at the rate of just thirty-two feet, if it 
were not for the resistance, or pushing back of the air. The air is 
a cushion. If it wasn’t for the air raindrops, and especially hard 
hailstones, would hit us with the force of bullets. 

ARE THE STARS INHABITED? 

When you look up at the stars at night don’t you wonder if 
people like ourselves live upon any of them? Some of the stars 
we know are far away suns, much larger than the sun that lights 
and warms our earth. A few of them are planets that, like the earth, 
circle around our own sun. If you were on one of these planets the 
earth would appear to you as one of the stars in the sky. We cannot 
really know if people live on the other planets. But we can think 
of all the reasons why we are able to live on the earth. We have 
light and heat from the sun, air to breathe, water to drink and to 
make plants grow. The plants and animals and minerals on the 
earth are suited to our needs for food and clothing and shelter. If 
anyone or all of these things differed from what they are we, too, 
would have to be different, or we could not live here. So if people 
exactly like ourselves are living on any other world, that world would 
have to be very much like the earth. Astronomers have not found 
any other planet that is just like our earth in these things that are 
so necessary to people made as we are. 

The question as to whether there is animal life at all on other 
worlds, is quite different. On this earth of ours are thousands of 
varieties of living creatures. They can live in the deepest sea, on 
the highest mountains, in the coldest and the hottest countries, and 
on many kinds of food. It would be very strange, among so many 
worlds, if ours was the only one that would support life. We do 
know that other worlds are made of the same elements as our own. 
They have lime and iron and salt and hydrogen, and other things 
in them that are necessary to life. On our earth, plant and animal 
life have been developed and fed out of these elements. So it seems 
only reasonable that where these are present living creatures should 
be able to exist. On the little red planet Mars, that is nearest us 
and that we can best study, we have manv reasons for thinking that 
intelligent beings do live. But for many reasons they must be 
different from us. Mars is smaller than our earth and older. It is 


398 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


worn down to plains, the sea is smaller, the air lighter. There is 
less heat and air and water. In order to live there at all, many 
scientists think the Martians would have to be superior to us. They 
would have to be better thinkers, and use what they have more 
intelligently and economically than we do. There are long, straight 
lines on Mars that some astronomers think are canals, to bring melting 
snow water from the poles to irrigate dry lands. Such vast engineer¬ 
ing works could mean only that the people of Mars must long ago 
have outgrown wars, and turned to world-wide works of peace. 
New things are being found out about Mars every year. Some of 
the children who read this may live to know certainly if this little 
neighbor of ours is inhabited. If it is, then the Martians, too, may 
be wondering, and even trying to discover, if our earth is peopled. 

WHY LIGHTNING RODS PROTECT HOUSES 

In the first place a lightning rod does not protect a house unless 
the lower end is well buried in the ground. If the lower part of the 
rod is rusted and broken off at the ground it really attracts the 
lightning, and then discharges it into the house. Lightning is elec¬ 
tricity. Metals attract and conduct, or carry electricity better than 
anything else does. So if lightning is discharged above a house it 
is easier for it to go to the metal rod and run down that, than it is 
to spread over the roof. But there is now less faith in the protective 
powers of a lightning rod than there once was, and fewer rods are used. 

WHY A DOG TURNS AROUND BEFORE LYING DOWN 

Dogs are wild animals that have been tamed. They have been 
tamed for so many hundreds of years that they are very different 
from any and all of their wild brothers of today—wolves, foxes, 
bears, jackals, and the wild dogs of the Esquimo tribes and of the 
Bushmen of Australia. But dogs have certain habits to which they 
cling, that came down from the wild dogs of many hundreds of years 
ago. One of these habits is the burying of bones. Another is this 
turning around and around before lying down. Wild dogs had to 
bury the bones they could not make use of at the time, to keep other 
dogs from carrying them away. And they had to make their beds 
in jungle grass or drifted leaves. This turning trampled a space 
flat for a comfortable bed, and left a wall of standing grass around 
it that hid the bed from prowlers. So today, you will see petted house 
dogs of high and long breed, burying bones stealthily, and turning 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


399 


around before lying down on the hearth rug. In the dearest dog 
friend we have, is something just a little untamed, and that seems 
to be what we need to connect our lives with all the beauty and 
mystery of natural things. 

HOW DOES A SPONGE HOLD WATER? 

Do you want to be told? It’s more fun to find things out for 
yourself. Get the smallest glass tube that is sold in drug stores. 
Put one end of it into a glass full of water and see what happens. 
The water rises m the tube a little higher than it stands in the glass 
No one knows just why it does this. It is thought that the wall of 
a tube has an attraction for the tiny molecules of water, and pulls 
them up a little way. The finer the tube the higher the water is 
drawn up into it. 

Now a hair is a very small, hollow tube. The sponge is made 
up of hair-like hollows that pull up or, as we say, soak up water. 
The Latin word for hair is capillary. So this force is called capillary 
attraction. Sugar, salt, starch, chalk, sponges and the hairs of animals 
and fibers of plants have capillary attraction. You can prove this 
by dipping threads, strings, pieces of cloth, the edge of a lump of 
sugar or salt in a liquid, and watching the water climb. It is by 
capillary attraction that water is pulled from the roots to the farthest 
leaves of tall trees. The water it not only pulled up, it is held up. 
If the hair tubes of a sponge or a towel are too full, some of the water 
falls or drips away, but most of it is held until it is evaporated into 
the air. 


WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE LEFT-HANDED 

Are you left-handed? If you are, very likely it worries mama 
and papa and all your teachers. It shouldn’t worry them. And 
really it is a great waste of useful time to try to make you right 
handed. The trouble—if it is a trouble—is in the brain. For some 
reason that no one understands, the nerves of out bodies cross over, 
so the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and 
the left brain the right side. Usually the left brain is a little the 
larger, so it takes command and makes the right side of the body 
leader. When, about six times out of a hundred, the right bram is 
larger, it makes the left side leader. It is supposed that the left bram 
in most people gets more blood because the heart is on the left side. 
This makes ninety four or five people out of every hundred right- 


400 


HOW AND WHY OP COMMON THINGS 


handed. Remember this: Left-handed people are just as bright, 
and just as “ handy,” or clever, with the hands, as right-handed people. 
Of course it looks odd to see a person eat and write with the left 
hand. But “looks” don’t count for much when work is to be done. 
A left-handed pitcher wins many a game of base-ball. 

WHY A POP-GUN POPS 

A pop-gun pops from an air explosion. The front end of the 
gun is made air-tight with a cork or plug. At the other end is the 
plunger, that fits the round bore just tight enough so it can be forced 
down to the plug. The bore is, of course, full of air. This air has 
no chance to get out. So when you push the plunger, the air is 
squeezed into a smaller space before it. It really becomes com¬ 
pressed air. Air doesn’t like being squeezed any more than you do. 
To get out, it pushes and pushes until the plug gives way. “Pop!” 
The air instantly expands and sets sound waves in motion. As the 
act is quick and sharp and short, the sound made by it is also. 
“Pop!” just describes it. Shut your lips to say “pop.” Fill your 
mouth with air from the lungs. Then let go and speak the word 
suddenly. In that way you make the same kind of an air explosion 
as the pop-gun. The power of compressed air is so great that it is 
used to make drills bore holes in the rocky walls of mines, and to 
hammer rivets in the iron work of bridges and sky-scrapers. Your 
pop gun is really a very scientific toy 

HOW CAN A CAT SEE IN THE DARK? 

In the first place a cat cannot see in pitch dark. It can only 
see by less light than you can. You can see in very bright light, 
and also in dim light. If you come out of a rather dark room where 
you saw well enough not to bump into things, into strong sunshine, 
you have to shade your eyes a moment until the pupils become 
smaller and admit less light. So, ingoing from brightness to dimness, 
you can see better after the pupils of the eyes have had time to expand. 
The eye is a wonderful automatic—or self-regulating—little window. 
It can shut out light if there is too much, or open up to admit all 
the possible rays if the light is too dim. The pupils of the cat’s eyes 
are able to close like narrow slits in a shutter, to keep out the noon- 
glare of the sun; and to expand to a big round window that catches 
all the rays in semi-darkness. You see cats—lions, tigers, leopards 
and all the beautiful wild cousins of your playful kitten—are night 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


401 


prowlers. They sleep and rest in the daytime, and hunt their prey 
at night. The house cat hunts mice at night. So a cat needs eyes 
that are veiled Irom strong light by day, and that can expand to 
admit all the few rays of light that are abroad at night. 

LIVE SILVER—WHAT IS IT? 

V hen mama sends you for something in a hurry, she says 
Run, quick! Ihe real old meaning of quick is to be alive. When 
you run quick you have to be very much alive. So when men found 
a silvery white metal that ran about in the liveliest kind of way, they 
called it quick, or live silver. They called it mercury, too. That 
means much the same thing. Mercury was the young messenger 
god of the Greek people. He had wings on his heels, and when he 
was sent on an errand, he fairly flew. 

Quicksilver isn’t really alive. It just happens to be melted, 
or in a liquid state Gold, silver, iron, copper, lead and all metals 
can be melted, if they are made hot enough. The difference is that 
quicksilver is a sort of polar bear, or Esquimo metal. Temperatures 
at which other metals are solid, just melts quicksilver. If heated to 
a temperature that melts gold, away Mercury goes in vapor or gas, 
like water. Cold shrinks quicksilver, heat expands it. Indeed, it is 
the most sensitive thing we know that is not alive. That is why it 
shrinks and swells, running up and down the little tube in the ther¬ 
mometer, and tells us the slightest change in the temperature of 
the weather. 

Quicksilver behaves as it does because it is a liquid. You cannot 
pick it up for the same reason that you cannot pick up water. But 
it does not wet paper. The reason it doesn’t soak into things is 
because it is denser than any solid thing we know. It is so much 
heavier, for the space it fills, that gold, silver and iron float on it 
as wood floats on water. Besides, it likes its own company best. No 
matter how much of it you pour out on a table it will not spread. 
Every particle clings together in one ball. If you split that ball up, 
each lot will roll up into a smaller ball, or bead. And if these beads 
get near enough to each other they promptly run together again. 
The particles of quicksilver have a stronger attraction for each other 
than anything else has for them. They have a strong attraction also 
for other metals. They seem to swallow gold and silver and other 
metal dust, in the most curious ways. So men have learned to send 
little Mercury ball messenger boys into all the cracks and crannies 


402 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


of powdered gold and silver ores, to swallow up and bring out every 
grain of the precious metals. How they get the gold and silver away 
from the Mercury when it swallows them, is another story. (See 
Mercury, Metallurgy, Gold.) 

THUMB PRINT AUTOGRAPHS 

Look at the ball of your right thumb very closely. It w r ould 
be better to look at it through a reading glass or microscope. It is 
covered with very fine lines that sweep in curves around a center. 
Sometimes these lines form a circle in the middle; sometimes an 
oval, sometimes a letter U, or a spiral like a letter S. Press the ball 
of your thumb on an ink pad such as is used for stamping. Then 
press it onto a sheet of white paper. Try until you get a clear print 
of the lines with no smears. That is your thumb autograph. No 
other thumb in the world, not even your own left thumb, will make 
a print just like it. Take the thumb prints of all the members of 
your family and of your friends, and see if you can find any two alike. 
Thumbs are like faces. No two are alike. This is curious, but you 
can’t see how it is of any use. It is. When a thief or other criminal 
is caught, a photograph is taken of his face and this is kept by the 
police. But it has been found that a man cannot always be known 
by his face. If a smooth-faced man grows a beard it changes his 
appearance. Age changes faces, too. But a thumb ball has lines 
that do not change. So now, besides the photograph, the police take 
thumb prints of the bad men they catch. 

FAIRY PRINCE ECHO 

Nearly all ancient peoples had pretty, poetic stories about the 
echo. Some, very likely, thought merry little fairies really lived 
in rocky caves and valleys, to shout and laugh back at them. No 
one really knew what an echo was until wise men discovered that 
sound travels in weaves, just as water and light and electricity travel. 
(See Acoustics, Wave-Motion and “Sound Waves and the Tele¬ 
phone.”) If a wave of water is stopped by a break-water or a cliff, 
it is thrown back into the sea. So if a sound is stopped by a wall 
it is thrown back to our ears. A big empty building, especially if 
windows and doors are closed so the sound weaves cannot escape, 
is a fine place for echoes. Best of all is a rock-walled glen in hilly 
country. The sound very seldom comes back just as it was made. 
When a wave of w T ater is stopped it is broken up and thrown back 


HOW AND WHY OF COMMON THINGS 


403 


in spray So a sound wave when stopped, is broken into an airy, 
shattered echo. It really seems as if some mocking sprite calls back 
from a fairy grotto in the rocks. 

WHY THE EARTH IS ROUND 

\\ ell, why is a raindrop round? Why is lead shot round? Maybe 
you think shot is moulded like bullets. It isn’t. The lead is melted. 
Then it is showered like rain from a tall shot tower. As it falls the 
liquid drops turn over and over. A force called gravity pulls all the 
parts of the little mass toward the center of it. And, as each one whirls 
the air presses on all sides with equal force. As the drops fall they 
cool and harden into tiny globes. Once the earth was in a soft, 
molten state and it, too, whirled through space and around the sun. 
So it was made round, and it cooled and hardened in that shape. 
The same forces keep it round. The sun, the moon and the stars 
are all globes. 

If the earth was all water, and if it constantly changed the 
direction of its whirling as a baseball does when pitched, it should 
be as round and smooth as a ball. But it is of water, soft earth and 
hard rocks, so the friction of the air is uneven. And it turns always 
along one line that runs through the north and south poles as straight 
as a string through a bead. So along that line the earth is flattened. 
Midway between the poles where the whirling is most rapid, the 
earth bulges. 

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING 

That is the order in which we speak of them. But really we 
should say lightning and thunder. They are both made the same 
instant, by two electric currents in storm clouds coming violently 
together. This produces both light and heat. Heat expands the 
air. Ths expansion starts a great wave or billow of air to rolling, 
and makes the crashing sound we call thunder. But as light waves 
travel faster than sound, we see the flash before we hear the crash. 
If. the two come very close together we know the sound did not have 
to travel far, and the storm causing both is very near. As a storm 
center moves away from us, the time between the flash and the roll 
lengthens. In that way you can tell when a storm will soon he over. 


HOW AND WHY OF ETIQUETTE 


RULES THAT GOVERN THE DRESS AND MANNERS OF PEO¬ 
PLE OF GOOD BREEDING AND THE CUSTOMS IT 
IS SO EMBARRASSING NOT TO KNOW. 


“Teaching manners and morals is plainly one of the most important 
parts of education.” —DR. CHARLES W. ELIOT, President Emeritus 
of Harvard. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF GOOD MANNERS. 

“Good morning.” 

That’s the way to begin each day in society—with a pleasant 
greeting. And you are “in society” as soon as you are outside your 
bedroom door. Did you ever think of that? You will never find bet¬ 
ter company, anywhere in the world, than in your own family, so don’t 
save your best manners for strangers. They won’t wear out by using 
them. On the contrary, good manners are a habit. If they are not 
begun at home and constantly practiced there, you may forget to 
put them on when strangers are about. As you go through life you 
will want to make friends of the very nicest people you meet. But 
if you are boorish in your manners, well-bred strangers will not care 
to know you. 

“But there are so many rules it is hard to remember all of them,” 
you say. 

There aren’t so many, really. It’s like Arithmetic—a few rules 
and a great many examples. One of them has been put into a rhyme 
that you should commit to memory: 

“Politeness is to do and say 
The kindest thing in the kindest way.” 

Think how many acts that one rule should inspire. Your very 
first thought should be to care for other people’s feelings. Next, 
you should be self-forgetful, self-possessed and self-respecting. Third, 
be natural. A selfish person may know all the customs of good society, 
but he never can be perfectly well-bred. A self-conscious person is 


404 





PRINCIPLES OF GOOD MANNERS 


405 


shy, and that makes him awkward and ill at ease. One who lacks self- 
control is nervous and unconsciously falls into habits which annoy 
other people. Besides, he is easily surprised and quick tempered, and 
so is betrayed into hasty speech and action. A person who is not 
sure of his own worth is usually snobbish. He curries favor of people 
whom he thinks above him, and is rude to his supposed inferiors. 
Finally, simplicity is the key-note of good breeding. Affected, preten¬ 
tious manners are in bad taste because they are insincere. 

You see, manners are very close to morals. The only sure foun¬ 
dation for them is a fine character. Having that one cannot go very 
far wrong in the important things of behavior. That is why you 
may find good manners on a poor and lonely farm, and very bad 
manners in a rich and socially prominent family. There are people 
of great wealth in every capital of the world who knock in vain at 
the doors of good society, and poor men who are welcomed in royal 
palaces. When Lincoln went to the White House as President, there 
were many customs of society that he had never heard of, but no one 
made a mistake about his being a gentleman. He was kind and help¬ 
ful, he was true, he had personal dignity and moral courage. Then, 
he was observant, so that he readily picked up the many social re¬ 
quirements of his high position. Social customs are much the same 
everywhere. There are small local differences that are quickly dis¬ 
covered by keeping one’s eyes open. Every observance has some 
good reason behind it. Oftener than you think you will find yourself 
saying: “Why, of course, that is what a well-bred person would do.” 


Good ?nanners, as we call them, are 

neither more nor less than good behavior, 

consisting of courtesy and kindness. 

—Smiles. 


Good Manners in the Home. 


One of the Happiest Investments You Can Make—Points About Per¬ 
sonal Cleanliness, Neatness and Dress—Bright Smiles and Clean Teeth 
—What They Do for Grandmothers in Europe—Your Manners at Home 
and in Other People’s Homes—About Candy Parties and the “Fidgets” 
—The Rights of Children and Their Elders. 


When you come out of your room in the morning, you should be 
perfectly clean and fully dressed. After the bath, special attention 
should be given the face, hands, finger-nails, hair and teeth. A girl’s 
shoes should be laced, her dress buttoned, her hair ribbons prettily 
tied, her belt and neck dressing adjusted so they cannot get out of 
order. A boy’s shoes should be polished, there should be no high- 
water mark under his cuffs, and he should have on his collar, tie and 
4bout Leaving coat. In very hot weather the coat may be left off, 

off one’s but his trousers should be snugly belted, not held up 

Coat by suspenders. It is due your own self respect to be 

clean and neat. And to appear soiled and untidy is to show a lack 
of respect for other people. This is a social law that applies to every 
occasion, from a President’s reception to breakfast with your own 
family. 

HOW TO BE PROPERLY DRESSED. 

Your clothes of course should suit the occasion. For every day 
home, school and business wear, the best materials of their kind may 
be used, but the garments should be simple in style and serviceable. 
You should not be out of style, nor too far in style. Extremes are 
Some not in good taste. It is better to be a little under¬ 
tones’’ dressed than over-dressed. You will not “look like 

About Dress everybody else,” if you study the art of dress. Find 

what colors and styles suit you—there is always a wide choice—and 
bring out your own individuality. But don’t make the mistake of 
buying cheap and tawdry things. And it is the worst possible taste 
for a child to be dressed elaborately or in more expensive materials 


406 




GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME 


407 


than his parents. In practically every other country than America, 
the oldest ladies wear the handsomest gowns. 

The writer has never forgotten a lesson in correct dress that 
she saw in a country house near Dublin, Ireland, at an afternoon 
tea. In an old family of position and wealth, there what Do 

were four generations of ladies. The great grand- You See in 

mother of eighty, was in black satin, with a cap and 111,8 Home? 
collar of point-lace, pinned on with diamonds. Her daughter-in-law, 
the mistress of the house, wore a foulard silk gown, with Irish lace, 
a pearl pin and several handsome rings. The twenty-five year old 
daughter of this lady, came in from a walk, in a tailor-made serge and 
a picture hat of beaver. Her tie pin and belt buckle were of dull 
silver and jade. A little six year old great-granddaughter came down 
from the nursery in white mull with not an inch of embroidery or lace 
about it. She was as clean and sweet as a daisy, but her only orna¬ 
ment was her golden hair, tied with a fresh blue ribbon and rippling 
to her waist. 

American g’rls, especially when they get into high-school, or 
begin to earn their own clothes in business, are apt to dress showily. 
Elaborate hair dressing, false hair, powder, high heels, thin hosiery 
and blouses, low neck-dressing, unnaturally small what some 
waists, jewelry, plumes and perfumes, make just the Girls Do in 

opposite impression intended. They attract atten- 11,8,1 School 

tion. This no lady ever tries to do; and it is the kind of attention 
that would shock an innocent girl if she understood it. Well-bred 
people think it such a pity that a sweet young girl should look so 
bold; and employers who are desirable do not care to have such con¬ 
spicuous girls in their offices.. The working girl, the school girl and 
the society girl on the street should wear simple tailor-made suits, 
serviceable shoes and quiet hats. For neatness and cleanliness, no 
style is so good as the washable shirt-waist. A girl’s “dress up” 
clothes should be as pretty as possible, but still simple and not of heavy, 
expensive materials. 

THE HAPPY EVENING AT HOME. 


The evening at home is the pleasantest part of the day, a little 
island of peace and affection in the voyage of life. Never take troubles 
home with you. Everyone has his own troubles and it is unkind to add 


408 


GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME 


to them, weak and selfish of you to expect anyone to help you bear 
yours. In the evening hours everybody under the home roof should 
be happy and free from care—the members of the family, those who 
are employed to work for you, and the guests who are visiting you. 


As it is unjust and unkind to make extra work for mother or the 
maid, boys and girls should never forget to wipe their feet on coming 

in, hang up their wraps and put their school books 
in some regular place. If they want to go into the 
kitchen to make candy, in the evening, they should 


Don’t Make 
Work for 
Mother or 
the Maid 


not leave a dirty stove, saucepan and sink for the cook to clean. 
Good girls will not stay in a family where the children are saucy and 
troublesome, and that makes it harder for mother. 


Americans are the most nervous, restless people in the world. 
The very hardest thing for an American child to do is to learn to sit 
still; but if you could see a French lady sitting perfectly still, listening 
attentively and smiling, you would think what the French call “re- 
Weii-Bred pose” a beautiful thing. Children should learn not to 

People Have fidget, rock, drum with their fingers, tap the foot on 

“Repose” the floor, cross the legs and swing one, jump up and 

down, squirm in a seat, bite the nails or lips or twist the face. All 
these are nervous habits. There are children in every schoolroom 
whose lips and fingers and feet are never still, and whose foreheads, 
by scowling and lifting of the eyebrows, have become as wrinkled as 
a washboard. And haven’t you seen a serene, self-controlled lady whose 
face is unlined at sixty? As your face does no work it should stay 
young at least as long as your body. The only kind of wrinkles that are 
excusable before old age, are the crow’s feet around the eyes, that are 
made by laughing. 


A SURE TEST OF GOOD MANNERS. 

You can always tell if a family uses its good manners all the 
time, by the way an old person is treated. In that matter of respect 
and tenderness for the old we could not do better than imitate the 
Chinese. In Great Britain, as you have seen from the example of 
the Irish home, the oldest members of a family are treated with the 
greatest honor. In Sweden the grandmother has a special sofa and 


GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME 


409 


footstool near the fire. It is a mark of honor to be asked to sit by 
her. In America the Jewish people keep the old patriarchal idea 
toward the aged. A boy should bring the most com- More Good 

fortable chair in the room forward for his grand- Examples 

mother. A girl should fetch a shawl for chilly shoul- from Abroad 
ders, see that the reading-lamp is properly placed and thread a needle 
for dim eyes. If grandfather is deaf, sit near him and keep him in 
touch with the conversation. Don’t shout to him. Shouting often 
confuses the deaf, and besides it calls other people’s attention to his 
affliction. He is much more apt to understand you if you raise your 
voice very little and take care to speak distinctly. 

A boy should rise with his father, when ladies enter the room, and 
see that they are comfortably seated. Everyone should be cheerful, 
good-tempered, ready to talk, or to listen to music or to reading aloud 
and to join in parlor games. You should neither do all the talking, 
and thus make a bore of yourself, nor sit glum as if you 
were nursing a grievance. The old idea that children Rights of 
should be seen but not heard, is no longer held. Child- children 
ren’s interests are just as important as grown people’s—but they are 
not more so. They should not be allowed to interrupt or correct 
anyone else. A child’s mistakes should be corrected by near relatives 
because he is a learner, but he should not be ridiculed or snubbed or 
teased, or be allowed to chatter about nothing. 


Evil communications corrupt good 


manners. 


—New Testament. 


Good Times at the Table 


A child should always say what’s true, 
And speak when he is spoken to, 

And behave mannerly at table; 

At least as far as he is able. 

—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 


You Can Have the Best Times Where There is the Most Good Breeding 
—How to Sit—What to Do and What Not to Do with Your Napkin— 
Knife and Fork Etiquette—How Bread Should Be Eaten—The Soup and 
the Spoon—About Second Helpings and Good Appetites—Table Talk— 
The Neighbor’s Children at Meal Time. 


The first social affair of the day is breakfast. Well-bred people 
are strict about table manners. All your life you will sit at table with 
other people three times a day. Think how many chances that is in a 
year to make yourself agreeable. If your table manners are offensive, 
your family may overlook the matter, or endure your boorishness in 
silence, but well-bred acquaintances will never ask you to eat a meal 
with them. And you should know that an invitation to dinner is the 
very highest social honor one person can pay another. 

Sit upright at the table. Do not slide down on your spine, nor 
sprawl forward on your elbows. Unfold a small breakfast or lunch 
six Things to napkin to its full width, a large dinner napkin to half 
£V“a7 n width, and lay it across your lap. Don’t tuck it in 

Table your neckband or button-hole. A baby needs a bib, 

but a child should learn early to eat without spilling food. Keep 
your hands in your lap until you are served. Don’t fidget with your 
knife and fork, drum with your fingers, kick a chair or table leg, or tap 
your foot on the floor. These are nervous habits that annoy other 
people. Learn by watching older people how to hold your knife and 
fork properly. Don’t make a noise in eating and drinking, take enor¬ 
mous bites or chew with your mouth open. To eat fast looks greedy 


410 

















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THREE RIGHT WAYS OF EATING 




THREE WRONG WAYS OF EATING 


ONE RIGHT THING AND TWO WRONG THINGS TO DO AI I ABLE 


8000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 





































GOOD TIMES AT THE TABLE 


411 


and is bad for the digestion. Don’t bite into a slice of bread and butter. 
Break the bread into suitable pieces for eating and butter each piece 
separately. Don’t bend over your plate and give the effect of shovel¬ 
ing your food into your mouth, and don’t reach for things. Ask the 
waitress or the person nearest the dish to pass it, saying: “If you 
please.” 

WHEN IN DOUBT, USE THE FORK. 


Never put a knife blade into your mouth. A witty man has said 
that a gentleman may take liberties with the English language, but 
not with his knife. A knife is used only for cutting food. A very 
small, sharp knife is for paring and dividing fruit, a small, blunt knife 
for spreading butter on bread. So limited is the use \vh at Knives 
of a knife in eating that, at dinners of many courses, and Forks and 

you may have but one knife at your plate, but a dozen Spoons are For 

forks. All beverages are taken directly from a glass or cup, or sipped 
with a spoon. Soup, watery vegetables and fruit sauce, berries, grape 
fruit, halved oranges, cantaloupes, ices and soft puddings are eaten 
with a spoon. Bread, small dry sandwiches, crackers and cheese, 
small cakes, many solid fruits, nuts, olives, pickles, \vh en You 
celery, radishes, corn on the ear and firm stalks of as- May Use 

paragus are properly taken up in the fingers. Prac- Your Fingers 

tically everything else is eaten with a fork—even peas, soft layer cake, 
club and mayonnaise sandwiches. Cream cheese should be put on a 
cracker with a butter spreader. A good rule is: when in doubt use a 
fork if possible. On an elaborately set table, a broad-tined fork is pro¬ 
vided for eating ice cream. 

HOW SOUP SHOULD BE EATEN. 


In eating soup, dip the edge of the spoon that is farthest from 
you, to fill it, and take the soup from the side. Don’t tip the plate to 
get the last spoonful. The butter spreader when not in use, is laid on 
the bread and butter plate, a teaspoon in the saucer. Don t litter 
the table-cloth about your plate. Put bones, potato skins and other 
refuse on your bread and butter plate or at the side of your large 
plate. If asked, tell which part of the chicken you prefer, or if you 
like your beef rare or well done. You need not wait to begin to 
eat until everyone is served, but don’t begin so soon as to leave 
everyone else behind. A meal isn t a race. 


412 


GOOD TIMES AT THE TABLE 


If you wish a second helping of anything, ask for it. A delicate 
appetite isn't fashionable, and a hostess is flattered when people like 
About the food she has provided. Of course, then, it is very 

Second bad manners to criticize the food or cooking. You 

Helpings need not eat anything you do not care for, or that you 

know is not good for you, but let it be served to you and say nothing 
about it. Children especially should be taught not to say that they 
do not like something that is on the table, to be surprised at an 
unfamiliar dish, or to ask for something that is not served. It is a 
mark of social experience to have a taste for a variety of foods and 
styles of cooking. People who do not like this and cannot eat that 
will find themselves left out of dinner parties and luncheons. And if 
* they go abroad where every country has its national cookery, they 
are likely to go hungry in the midst of plenty, and miss one of the 
pleasures of travel. 

POLITENESS TO THE WAITER AND OTHERS. 

Don’t thank a waiter for serving you, any more than you would 
thank a clerk in a store. It is his business to serve. But if you ask 
some extra service it is gracious to say: “Will you please.” 

Don’t read a newspaper nor private letters at the table, thus 
obliging others to sit in silence, for fear of troubling you. A family 
letter from a near relative may be read aloud, for it is full of news 
and cheer and makes a topic for conversation. 

Never notice an accident. In Japan if anyone at table overturns 
a dish or breaks a cup, no one sees it. They begin to 
talk about the chrysanthemum show, or someone 
tells a funny story. A laugh is a breeze that blows 

THE RIGHT KIND OF TABLE TALK. 

Table talk is a fine art. Because unpleasant thoughts interfere 
with the enjoyment and digestion of food, certain topics must not be 
mentioned at table. Among these subjects are death, disease, sani¬ 
tation, special diets, calamities, crimes, family quarrels or faults, busi¬ 
ness or school or neighborhood troubles, or anything about which 
people differ widely and are likely to get excited and argue. Table- 
talk is light, bright and crisp, never very serious. 


A Lesson 

from 

Japan 

clouds away. 


GOOD TIMES AT THE TABLE 


413 


When you have finished eating, drop your napkin unfolded, be¬ 
side your plate since at a dinner party a napkin is not supposed to be 
used again; and lay your knife and fork on your plate, VVhen You 
side by side, not crossed. Don’t pile up your dishes, Have Finished 
with the idea that you are helping the waitress. She Eating 
has her own method of collecting dishes and you may confuse her. 
Don’t use a tooth pick at table, nor anywhere except in the toilet, 
unless it is absolutely necessary. In that case hold a napkin before 
your mouth. Of course you will not go about with a tooth pick in 
your mouth. If you are obliged to leave the table before the others 
do, ask the hostess to excuse you. At home that’s mother, remem¬ 
ber. She will say “certainly,” graciously. Then rise and bow to her, 
and bow again to include all the others at the table. 


SHOULD WE “INVITE OURSELVES?” 

It is not good manners for children to “run in” to meals with 
friends and neighbors. Grown people do not invite themselves in 
other people’s houses, so why should children? And Boys and Girls 
boys and girls should not invite company to meals in and “the 

their own homes without their mother’s permission. Neighbors” 

They are putting her to trouble and disarranging the work of the 
maid. One mother made it a rule that when her sixteen-year-old 
daughter brought a guest to dinner, she must return from school in 
time to set the table properly, arrange the flowers and make an extra 
salad or dessert. That was excellent social training. Men and boys 
cannot do the extra work that is necessary for the proper entertain¬ 
ment of guests, so they should ask in the morning or call up over the 
telephone to make sure that company is convenient for mother to 
have. 


The small courtesies sweeten life; the 


greater , ennoble it. 


—Bovee. 


On the Street 


“Keep Sweet and Keep Moving.” 

—ROBERT J. BURDETTE. 


Rules About Bowing and Lifting the Hat—When One Should Bow to 
Strangers—When One Should Offer One’s Arm to a Lady—Getting On 
and Off a Street Car—“Dos” and Don’ts” Governing Conduct Inside 
the Car. 

After breakfast a family scatters to school, business offices, to 
work, etc., and on various errands. Everyone is on the street at some 
hour of the day, so there is a special code of manners for the street, 
public conveyances and public places. The principle of street manners 
may be summed up in a sentence: Look pleasant, keep to the right 
to avoid collision, be self-possessed, go along briskly, mind your own 
affairs and do nothing to attract attention. 

ETIQUETTE OF THE BOW AND THE LIFTED HAT. 

Recognize acquaintances with a bow. If near enough a pleasant 
greeting may be exchanged. A lady bows first to a gentleman. A gen¬ 
tleman bows, touches his hat or gives a military salute to his men 
friends, but he lifts his hat to women. He bows to his mother, wife 
or sister, in meeting or parting from them, as ceremoniously as if 
they were strangers. Two ladies who meet step to the inner edge 
of the walk, near the building, if they wish to talk so as not to be in 
other people’s way. If a gentleman wishes to talk with a lady, it is 
better to turn and walk in her direction. And when he is walking 


with a lady, a gentleman lifts his hat to anyone she 
recognizes whether known to him or not. The lady, 
however, does not recognize his friends. A man lifts 


When a 

Gentleman 

Bows 


his hat in passing strange women in hotel parlors, halls, on stairways 
and in public elevators. It is not necessary to keep his hat off during 
a trip in an elevator. He may catch cold if he does and politeness 
never obliges anyone to do anything dangerous to himself, unless to 
protect the weak and helpless. Remember a bow is a social civility, 
the smallest coin of society. It does not mean a calling acquaintance 


414 






ON THE STREET 


415 


and may be given to anyone. A bow or a lifted hat should never be 
refused to anyone who thinks he recognizes you. He may be mistaken, 
and if he is he would feel humiliated by the snub. 

When a gentleman is with a lady, he takes the outside of the 
walk because that is the most exposed place. He does not offer his 
arm unless the lady is old or lame, or it is after night and she is in 
danger of being separated from him or jostled in a About 
crowd. Women are not the delicate, helpless creat- offering 
ures they were once thought to be. A child, an old one’s Arm 
person of either sex or a blind or crippled man should be helped, 
when they need to be, in crossing streets or entering and leaving 
cars. A question from a stranger should be answered civilly, and 
you may ask directions of anyone politely. If you can do so, it is 
best to appeal to policemen, car-conductors, or go into a corner drug 
store. 

WHEN OTHER PEOPLE ARE ILL BRED. 

Never resent the behavior of an ill-bred stranger. If he wants 
more than half the road, give it to him. Lincoln once said: “If a man 
won’t turn out for me I turn out for him. This keeps the peace and 
expedites travel.” Remember, no one can insult you. He can simply 
show his own bad manners. But no man or boy should stand by 
and see a bully abuse an animal, a child or othet defenseless person. 
Make him stop if you are big enough. If not, call for help or a police¬ 
man. 

PROPER BEHAVIOR IN PUBLIC CONVEYANCES. 

A gentleman who enters a street car with a lady, helps her up the 
steps and follows her. In leaving a car he gets off first and helps her 
down. He gives her the inside seat next the window, and facing 
forward, and pays her fare. But if she is not the guest of another 
person, a lady should pay her own fare. Two ladies should not squab¬ 
ble over who pays the fare. It simply makes them conspicuous. Have 
your fare ready for the conductor and ask for a transfer or for infor¬ 
mation quietly but distinctly. The car makes a good deal of noise. 
This is a good rule, too, in thanking anyone who offers you his seat. 
You should not be willing to accept a favor from anyone without 
thanking him, audibly and pleasantly. 


416 


ON THE STREET 


It used to be thought that a man or boy should give up his seat to 
any woman or girl who was standing. Now, good manners do not 
absolutely require him to offer his seat to anyone who is as well able 
About to stand as he is, but I always think better of a man 

Giving- Up or boy who does it, don’t you? A strong man or 

one’s seat woman, boy or girl, should give up a seat to an old or 

ill person or cripple, of either sex, to a woman who is carrying a child, 
or to a laundress with a big basket of clothes. 

No well-bred person will crowd, shove, carry an umbrella or cane 
at a dangerous angle, wear hat pins that threaten other people’s 
eyes, tread on people’s feet or put his own so far out in the aisle 
that other people stumble over them, chew gum, eat peanuts and 
scatter the shells, talk or laugh aloud in any public place, or occupy 
two seats in a car when other 0 are standing. For this last offense 
there is an ugly name and a person who commits it quite deserves it. 
You should not raise or lower a shade without asking those nearest 
if they will be inconvenienced. A gentleman who sees any lady in 
difficulties with a window should offer his help. If the ventilation of 
a car is bad, and it usually is, speak to the conductor about it. Don’t 
put your feet on the seat opposite. Shoes have street dust on them, 
and you shouldn’t want to use the clothes of the next person to sit 
down, as a door mat. 


Of manners gentle, of affections mild; 
In wit a man , simplicity a child. 


—Pope. 


For a Girl Traveling Alone 


The Question of Dress and the Wearing of Jewelry—What Courtesies 
May be Accepted from Fellow Travelers—In the Pullman—At the Ho¬ 
tel—Ordering One’s Dinner—When Reading at Table is Allowable— 
The Waiter and His Duties. 


It is our boast that, in America, an attractive young lady may 
go from New York to San Francisco and not be in any way molested. 
On the other hand, countless girls, through ignorance of what is and 
what is not proper to do, get into serious trouble in making even a 
short journey alone. A girl traveling alone should dress quietly, 
in a tailor-made suit, or in a simple dark gown of wool, silk or 
linen, and wear a small hat and a long dust coat. She wha t to 
should wear no valuable jewelry, nor carry more Wear when 
money, in cash, than she needs for the journey. She Traveling 
should have her tickets, checks, keys and small change in a handbag 
where she can get at them readily. 

A coat or other article in a seat is notice that it is occupied 
and the holder of it absent temporarily. A lady should take a seat 
that is entirely unoccupied, if possible, and she may remove her hat, 
veil, coat and gloves if she wishes to do so. Then she should sit 
quietly and enjoy the landscape from the window or read a magazine. 
She may accept a slight service from a fellow-traveler, About 
such as lowering the window, but if a man annoys her Traveling 
by trying to make her acquaintance she should re- Acquaintances 
move to another seat, or speak to the conductor who will protect her. 
A man or an elderly woman may talk to anyone, but a young woman 
may talk only to another girl, to children or a mother with children 
or to a very old lady. No one should tell any travelling acquaintance 
anything about herself, or her destination, exchange cards, accept in¬ 
vitations, or any favor beyond the loan of a magazine or similar 
courtesy. 

IN THE PULLMAN. 

In a Pullman car there is a special conductor and a colored porter, 
and in the long distance express trains a colored lady s maid, whose 

417 




418 


FOR A GIRL TRAVELING ALONE 


business is to look after the safety and comfort of passengers. An 
electric bell in the wall of each berth will be answered at any mo¬ 
ment, day or night. When your berth is made up you have to sit in it, 
behind the curtains to undress, but you should take off only your 
outer garments and put on bed slippers and a dark silk or wool 
kimono over the underwear. In those you can go to the dressing- 
room, with toilet articles in a hand bag. Learn to make your toilet 
as quickly as possible so as not to keep others waiting. 

If a mistake has been made and friends fail to meet the train, 
there is always a telephone in the station to call people up. In small 
if Friends places the station agent is there to advise travelers. 

Fail to In large cities, a policeman is always on duty, and 

Meet You there is usually a matron who will take a girl without 

escort to her friends or to a safe lodging. Any good hotel will, on 
call, send a cab at any hour, and with a responsible driver, to bring a 
guest. A woman who arrives in a strange city after nightfall, and 
who has not enough money to go to a good hotel, who does not 
know where to go and has no safe escort, should remain in the station 
waiting-room until morning. 

MANNERS IN HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS. 

A lady who is stopping at a hotel alone need only to be quiet in 
dress and manners, self-possessed and have money to pay her bills. 
She should write her name and home address in the register, give any 
large sum of money and her small valuables to the clerk to be put into 
Things to Do the hotel safe, lock her trunk on leaving her room; 

and Things lock the door and leave the room-key at the desk on 

Not to Do going out. She should not run up and down the 

stairs, hum tunes in the halls, stare out of windows, stroll in the lobby, 
use the elevator twenty times a day, play on the piano in the par¬ 
lor or sing. A bell-boy will take her shoes down to be polished, or 
call a cab; a waiter will get a newspaper; a chambermaid will hook a 
gown at the back. For extra personal services a small tip should be 
given. If a hotel servant is inattentive or impertinent, do not reprove 
him, but report the matter at the desk. 

In the dining room ask the head-waiter for a quiet table at the 
side or in a corner. He will remember your face and give you the 
same table next time. Decide quickly what you want to eat. Break- 


FOR A GIRL TRAVELING ALONE 


419 


fast may be ordered at once, but it will be brought on in courses thus 
—fruit; a cereal; bacon and eggs; toast and coffee; griddle cakes and 
syrup. The dinner menu has so many things on it, In the 

some of the names in French, that it is confusing to Dining 

the inexperienced. If you do not know what a dish is, Room 
ask the waiter without embarrassment. You are expected to order 
only one kind of soup, fish, entree, roast, salad and dessert. You may 
order your coffee in a large cup to drink during the meal, or a small 
cup of black coffee with crackers and cheese, at the end, as you prefer. 
You may omit any course, or order as simple or as elaborate a dinner 
as you like. 

In an American style hotel the charge by the day includes meals. 
In hotels conducted on the European plan the charge is made for the 
room. Meals may be taken in the restaurant connected with the hotel, 
or in any other place you prefer. There, of course, you order from 
the card, at a stated price for each dish. Larger portions are served 
than under the American plan, and a two course lunch or a three 
course dinner is usually sufficient. 

Don’t fidget or be embarrassed at table in any public place. No 
one is paying any attention to you. You may read a newspaper or 
make out a shopping list or a program of engage- Etiquette of 
ments for the day while waiting to be served. If a the Table 

stranger passes the salt, thank him, but do not get at Hote,s 

into a conversation. A group of friends dining together should talk 
quietly, but not about personal affairs. Ask the waiter for any serv¬ 
ice you may require within the sphere of his usual duties. If ladies 
are alone he will help them on and off with their wraps. It is proper 
to give the waiter a bill when he brings the check, and let him pay 
the cashier. Then give him a small tip if you wish to do so. 


Manners 7iiust adorn knowledge, and 
smooth its way through the world . 

—Earl of Chesterfield. 


Politeness in Business Life 


The Relation of Good Manners to “Getting On” in the World—How 
Misbehavior in School Handicaps a Boy in Business Life—Why Some 
Doors are Closed to Some People—Good Manners in Public Places. 


From the street men go into business offices and factories, chil¬ 
dren into school rooms. School is, in part, a child’s business life and, in 
part, his social life. Good manners there are the same as in the work¬ 
aday world, and places of public use. A pupil should be on time with 
well-prepared lessons, and clean and neat in appearance. He should 
How Rude do wor k that is expected of him, and be atten- 

Boys are tive, respectful and obliging to the teacher, and he 

Handicapped should not disturb the work of his classmates. A 

boy who has been idle, mischievous and noisy in school, and rude to 
his teachers, will have to unlearn such manners before he can hold a 
place in a business office. He should not tell tales, in school or out. 
No employer wants a whiner, and a tattler is sure to tell business 
secrets. 

The money value of good manners should be taught to growing 
boys and girls. We all know men of brains, honesty and industry, 
who have succeeded in business, who are personally disagreeable. But 
Money Value they w °uld have had a larger and easier success, more 
friends and a pleasanter life if they had been well-bred. 
In the business, as in the social world, many doors 
are open to good-breeding that the boorish man cannot batter down. 
Of two boys or girls who apply for a place to work, the one whose 
appearance and manner make the best impression is likely to be given 
the chance. 


of Good 
Manners 


Boys who start out with good manners will find business life 
much pleasanter and, with equal industry, will rise faster than boys 
who are rude and thoughtless in their behavior. 

Begin by being courteous to your fellows at play. It isn’t the boy 
who pushes or crowds that gets on best with his fellows, and this is 
just as true when you get to working in an office or “on the road.” 


420 




POLITENESS IN BUSINESS LIFE 


421 


A good salesman usually has, among other things, a stock of good 
humor. People like him. “Cheeriness, the cordial greeting, the warm 
hand clasp, the friendly smile, the straight, direct level eyes,” says a 
prominent business man, “these are the best introductions for a sales¬ 
man. Business should be done in an atmosphere of sunshine, not of 
gloom. 

“Courtesy in business means success in business. Courtesy gets 
the audience, courtesy listens, and tact sells the goods.” 

Merchants who buy, as well as salesmen who sell, have learned 
that it not only makes you feel better to be courteous to your fellow 
man, but that it pays. A good business man will not Meaning of 

refuse to see and listen to a salesman, because he has “Good wrn” 

learned that, if he did, he would lose a great many valu- 111 Business - 
able opportunities to buy to advantage. And the business of thousands 
of merchants has been built up largely because they have been courteous 
to their customers. People like to trade with them. What is called 
“good will” is more valuable to a merchant than anything he keeps in 
his store; and “good will” means just that—the “good will” customers 
have toward a business man or a business house. 


GOOD MANNERS IN PUBLIC PLACES. 

The kind of behavior that is required in a well-conducted school¬ 
room is expected in church, theater, concert and lecture-hall, libraries 
and art galleries. At any place of public worship or entertainment, 
it is ill-bred to arrive late, to be fussy in settling into a seat, to turn 
and stare about, to whisper, giggle, yawn or flutter the leaves of a 
book. Such behavior is unkind to the minister or entertainer, and 
interferes with the pleasure of an audience. A lady should take off her 
hat whenever she sees that other ladies have done so. In church it is 
bad manners to look at a watch or to leave before the services are over. 
One may leave a theater or concert, quietly, between the acts or the 
numbers on a program, but should express no disapproval of the play 
or music. In an art gallery visitors are usually required to check 
canes and umbrellas at the door. This is because people often point 
at pictures and sculptures with these, and are liable to punch a hole 
through a canvas or knock a small bust from a pedestal. In libraries 
no talking or unnecessary noise is allowed. Questions should be asked 
of attendants in an undertone. 


Listening and Talking 


Skill in Both are Necessary for the Beautiful Art of Conversation— 
What Makes a Pleasant Voice—Do You Say “Yes” and “No” as You 
Should?—The Sarcastic Person, the Prosy Person and Other Kinds of 
Persons You Don’t Want to Be. 


Very often young people complain that they do not know what to 
talk about in society. Talk about pleasant things. The German poet, 
Heine, has said: “God has given us speech in order that we may 
say pleasant things to our friends.” Then a pleasant voice, low, clear, 
with an upward inflection, makes the most ordinary words sound 
pleasantly in the ear. Don’t let your voice or your mouth sag at the 
corners. Look straight at the person who is talking to you. A half 
open mouth, a vacant stare, a wandering eye and restlessness, are all 
ill-bred. Then, in answering, speak distinctly. Don’t whine or mum¬ 
ble or shout. 

USE THE SIMPLER WORD AND AVOID SLANG. 

There are so many little niceties of speech. Did you ever notice 
that the best books, and the stories that you love to read again are 
written in the simplest language? So it should be in speaking. Al¬ 
ways use the shorter and simpler word. “Home,” for instance, is bet¬ 
ter than “residence.” It means more. You should say: “I am going 
to bed,” not: “I think I shall retire to my room for the night.” 

And with so many good words in the dictionary, it seems a pity 
that anyone should use the slang and careless talk of the street. Don’t 
say that a thing is “fierce” or call an entertainment a “bum show,” 
boys. 

And girls, such expressions as “my goodness” and “did you ever” 
Girls mean nothing and sound silly. Don’t say “awfully 

This is sweet,” “perfectly elegant” and “just terrible” to de- 

for You scribe very ordinary things. Overdressing your ideas 

is in as bad taste as overdressing your person. 

HOW TO SAY “YES” AND “NO.” 

Don’t say “uh-huh” in answering a question, or “what!” if you 
failed to understand. Say: “Yes, mama,” “No, Mrs. Adams.” “Yes 


422 




LISTENING AND TALKING 


423 


sir” and “no ma’am” have gone somewhat out of fashion, but they 
are always good manners, and old people think no other forms so 
respectful. But nowadays we use peoples’ names in addressing them. 
So if you wish to have something repeated, say: “I beg your pardon, 
Mr. Stuart.” Use “please” and “thank you” and “pardon” freely. 
They are drops of oil in the wheels of society. And if it’s Easy to 

you are used to saying these things you will not find it f/you Know 

hard to apologize for a mistake or an accident. Why How 
should it be difficult to admit that you were in the wrong? To err is 
human, and everyone loves to forgive. Just say: “I beg your pardon. 
That was stupid of me”; or: “I am so sorry, mama; I never meant to 
hurt you.” 

Don’t talk about yourself or your wonderful doings. Don’t tell 
long, prosy stories, or give information or advice, unless they are 
asked for, and then be sure they are wanted. Don’t interrupt people 
or help anyone tell a joke. Don’t get excited over an one Person 
argument, or be sarcastic. Sarcasm comes from a Talk ” 1 * 1 

Greek word that means to tear flesh like a dog, and it About 
still means to be cutting, wounding in speech. Wit at other people’s 
expense is a two-edged sword. It hurts the victim and kills friend¬ 
ship. 

REMEMBER WHAT KING ARTHUR SAID. 


And don’t gossip. You know what King Arthur said to his 
knights? “Speak no evil, no, nor listen to it.” A malicious story may 
not be true; it is certainly unkind, and it should not interest you. 
Rebuke scandal by silence and by changing the subject. Your mind 
is a crystal bowl, not a sewage catch basin. Sir Galahad had the 
strength of ten “because his heart was pure.” 

Talk of things and ideas, not persons, except interesting public 
persons like presidents, actors, authors, artists and musicians whose 
talents give wide pleasure. Talk about the last book Kind of 

you read, how pretty Mary looks in her new hat, the Things to 
Junior Civic League and how it is improving the town. Talk About 
Be brief, be merry and bright. Draw out other people and listen. 
Good listeners are scarce and popular. Try to remember all the amus¬ 
ing things you see and hear. A laugh is sparkling, and brightens 

everyone up. 


424 


LISTENING AND TALKING 


Don’t try to appear profound, nor ride a hobby. People who 
are worth while in society are apt to be as serious as you are, but 
they need, all the more, to be relaxed and amused. Think before 
you speak: “Is this kind or wise or witty?” Flattery is unkind be¬ 
cause it is insincere, but a well-turned compliment is always agreeable. 
It is unwise to make long explanations or apologies or to repeat the 
clever things you said yesterday. 


Not to 
Talk About 


DRAWING OTHER PEOPLE OUT. 

Remember not to monopolize the conversation or sit glum and 
irresponsive. It is said that Lord Macaulay, while a brilliant talker, 
had equally brilliant “flashes of silence” in which he drew other people 
Some Things out to talk their best. Don’t be witty at some one’s 
else expense, unless it is in defense of some principle, 
and then be good-natured about it. Don’t remark 
that a story some one has just told was invented in the Ark. The 
remark itself is antique. Don’t tell an inappropriate story that will fall 
flat, nor miss the point. A low voice is an excellent thing in a man 
or woman, and a well-modulated, musical voice in conversation is a 
thing that is too little valued. Learn to express your thoughts in 
clear, simple English without violence or exaggeration. 

Don’t talk “shop.” Shop to men is office affairs, money, mar¬ 
kets, stocks and bonds, deals, “cases” for the doctor and lawyer, the¬ 
ology for the minister. Shop to women, is children, servants, clothes, 
bargains, dishonest tradesmen. Don’t slight anyone, sneer or in- 
WTiat is Meant dulge in a superior smile at awkwardness. Don’t 
by “Talking carry disagreeable news, nor repeat to people the un- 
shop ” kind things that are said about them. Don’t warn 

people of their faults or tell them that they are looking bad. Never 
touch anyone, unnecessarily, unless very intimate. Familiarity is 
offensive. Ladies may be warm friends for years, yet never use each 
other’s Christian names nor kiss each other. 


WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

Cultivate some gift that will give pleasure to others and be gen¬ 
erous with it. If asked to sing, play, tell stories, read aloud or join 
in a parlor game, do so at once, cordially, or give some real reason 
for refusing. Don’t wait to be teased, or you may be disappointed. 
Your refusal is ungracious and few people will urge you. 


LISTENING AND TALKING 


425 


While you should not be drawn into heated arguments on poli¬ 
tics or religion, or any subject on which people think deeply or differ 
widely, good breeding does not oblige you to sacrifice your principles. 
A person without opinions is colorless and uninter- \t, out 

esting. You should always defend your country and Politics and 

its customs, but without anger. The witty wife of an Religion 
American diplomat in London thus answered a young lord who re¬ 
marked, rather superciliously, that there could not be any real society 
in the United States because America has no leisure class. 

“Oh, yes, we have,” she said with perfect good humor, “we call 
them tramps.” She was applauded, and no one appreciated the retort 
more than the victim of it. Another time, on being asked by a 
countess if an American woman then in London was a lady, or if she 
was employed on a newspaper: “I understand that she is both,” was 
the quiet answer, and the great lady apologized for applying the 
British standard of class to an American, who needed to be only well 
educated and well-bred to be a lady. 


Inhere is a courtesy of the heart; it is 

allied to love . From it springs the purest 

courtesy in the outward behavior. 

—Goethe. 


Social Life for Children 


Some Things a Child Should Not Be Allowed to Do—Entertaining Lit¬ 
tle Visitors—When Visitors are Impolite—The Child’s Correspondence 
—Conduct of a Child’s Party—Form of the Invitation—Place of the 
Older Person. 

A child should not be banished from the family living room when 
visitors are present. He should learn to be at ease with strangers. 
Very early he should be able to greet a guest politely, to answer ques¬ 
tions properly and not to ask too many. A “smart” child should not 
be “shown off” nor allowed to hang on a visitor, handle her belongings 
and chatter. As he will have little interest for a grown-up caller, he 
should amuse himself quietly. If a guest is staying in the house no 
child should be allowed to go to her room uninvited, nor be curious 
or meddlesome. He should watch, however, for chances to do little 
services. If the mother is obliged to take a child along when making 
calls, he should be told not to handle books, ornaments or hangings 
in other people’s houses. But a child’s chief social education should 
come through his own family, in the school room and by association 
with other children. 

Very early a child should have his own little visitors and learn 
how to entertain them properly. Many grown-up people are awk¬ 
ward about making introductions. A little five-year-old girl should 
find it perfectly natural to lead a playmate to her mother and say: 
“Mama, this is my friend, Marion Howard.” The visitor should be 
greeted cordially, even ceremoniously: “I am very glad to know 
you, Marion. Helen talks about you so much.” “You see, mama, 
we both just love dolls,” says the beaming little hostess. Both chil¬ 


dren are impressed by the courteous treatment and 
put on their best behavior. They learn to introduce 
people naturally, that the young person should be 


Polite 

Welcomes to 
tattle Friends 


presented to the older one, the gentleman to the lady. Then they 
should be told to pronounce names distinctly, for it is embarrassing 
not to catch the new names, and if they can mention some mutual 
interest, like dolls or base ball, that starts a conversation without 
awkward pause. 


426 




SOCIAL LIFE FOR CHILDREN 


427 


A CHILD’S ENTERTAINMENT OF VISITORS. 


A child should be held strictly to account for treating little vis¬ 
itors politely and hospitably. A small tea set and simple refresh¬ 
ments are a great help. Occasionally a child should be allowed to 
invite a guest or two to the family luncheon, and for his guests a 
special dish and decorations should be provided. Given high standards 
of conduct and opportunity to judge others, children learn early to 
make wise choice of their friends. One day a little The 

friend of the writer’s helped a playmate put on her of Little 

wraps, opened the door for her politely and smiled as Friends 
she said good-bye. No one knew anything was the matter so perfect 
was her self-control, until she came to her mother with red cheeks and 
snapping eyes. “I’m never going to invite Elizabeth Brown to see 
me again. She threw my things around and broke a teacup, and she 
never apologized.” 

“What did you say to her, dear?” 

“I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t because she was my visitor. 
But I just boiled inside.” 

She was entirely right. The little visitor was ill-bred, and abused 
hospitality. A lady shows no irritation, no matter how boorish a 
visitor may be, but she is careful to cut from her list of acquaintances 
anyone who is so lacking in breeding as to make her “boil inside.” 


CHILDREN’S CORRESPONDENCE. 

As soon as a small person can write at all, he should have note 
paper and be encouraged to write to relatives, to thank people for 
gifts and to answer his own invitations in proper form. And, of course, 
a letter to a child should not be opened before he sees it. A letter is 
a very personal possession and a beautiful mystery. The child’s right 
in it should be respected and his pleasure in it be unspoiled. If his 
letters are opened, it will be difficult for him to understand that he 
should never open or read another person’s letter. Do not be afraid 
that he will be secretive about his correspondence. A child always 
runs to mother with a letter if certain of her interest, for he wants to 
share his pleasure. And he will consult with her anxiously about how 
letters should be answered. 


428 


SOCIAL LIFE FOR CHILDREN 


THAT GLORIOUS EVENT—THE CHILDREN’S PARTY. 

The greatest social event of a child’s life is a party. Many mothers 
do not believe in children’s parties, thinking them too exciting to the 
nerves and upsetting to the digestion. But a lawn-party, with simple 
games and refreshments, may be made a pure delight, do no harm and 
be a means of social education. The little hostess should do every¬ 
thing possible herself; select the guests, with mother’s advice, write 
the invitations if old enough to do so, have a voice in the refresh¬ 
ments, decorations and games, and stand with mother to receive her 
guests properly. 

The wording of the note should lie the child’s natural expression, 
for you know simplicity is good manners. She may write: 

Dear William, 

Please come to my birthday party. I will be eight years old 

on the seventeenth of May. The party is from three to six. 

Your little friend, 

Marjorie Murray. 

For any gala occasion a child should be daintily dressed, but in 
washable materials. Thev are not cheap when laundry bills are taken 
into account. Clothes, once put on, should be forgotten, or the wearer 
will become self-conscious. A child should wear nothing that he 
must remember not to spoil. A black velvet suit on a little boy or 
an embroidered marquisette over pink silk, on a little girl, may come 
to disaster, and the consequences of its ruin spoil what ought to be a 
happy memory. 

DON’T HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS. 

In a small town all the children of a suitable age should be invited; 
in a larger place the classmates in school and the children of family 
friends and neighbors. The more there are the merrier, and there 
should be no distinction of class. As we grow older, we have duties 
and interests that compel us to limit our circle of friends to those who 
are congenial to us. But little people do not need to be so exclusive, 
and snobbiness in a child is something unnatural and odious. Besides 
the hurt that is felt by a child who knows of a party and is not invited, 
is deep and lasting. 

Refreshments should be served near some meal hour, and it is an 
attention that is not appreciated by friends to stuff their children with 


SOCIAL LIFE FOR CHILDREN 


429 


rich indigestibles. Cocoa and chicken sandwiches, plain ice-cream and 
a simple cake are sufficient. Souvenirs of a party are treasured by 
children, even the decorated paper napkins, a place card and a flower. 

An older person should oversee the games and quell disturbers, 
for alas, all the little guests will not be well-behaved, and see that 
shy children are not neglected. The old, old games, such as puss-in- 
the-corner, drop-the-handkerchief, blind-man’s buff, forfeits, charades 
and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, are always popular. supervision 
Kissing games are no longer permitted, as promiscu- By an older 

ous kissing by young or old is in bad taste, and epi- Person 

demies are started that way. There may be a fish-pond, a grab-bag 
or a May-pole. If papa’s purse is long enough, a story-lady may be 
engaged for an hour, a sleight-of-hand-man, a man to show lantern 
slides, or a lady who plays the banjo and sings funny darkey songs. 
Such a party is nothing less than a fairy story come true to a child. 
It is vividly remembered, and the laws of hospitality involved are im¬ 
pressed upon the mind. 


Courtesy is a science of the highest im¬ 
portance. It is like grace and beauty in 
the body , which charm at first sight , and 

lead on to further intimacy and friendship. 

—Montaigne. 


GOOD FORM 


We often hear that a person or an entertainment was in “good form,” 
and are not clear as to just what that means. Manners have their basis 
in morals, but “form” is social experience and good taste. For instance, 
it is not impolite to use printed instead of engraved visiting cards, nor 
for a man to be married in evening dress in the daytime, but both are 
bad form. To be in good form is to do what custom has established as 
suitable to the occasion. Not to do these things is to appear awkward 
and sometimes ridiculous. Here is a case in point: The charm of a 
young girl is her freshness and modesty. For her to appear at her 
coming out party in a low cut gown and diamond necklace is an offense 
against good taste. She is a “bud” not a full-blown rose. 


Young Men and Women in Society 


When Debuts are Usually Made—Dress of the Debutante—Her Moth¬ 
er’s Dress—How Long Callers Should Stay—The Table and Its Color 
Scheme—The Refreshments and Who Should be Invited—Reasons for 
the Chaperon—The Young Man’s Social Duties—What He May Do and 
What He May Not Do. 

A young girl may be introduced to society at any age that her 
formal education is finished—at eighteen, on leaving high or board¬ 
ing school, or when she has completed the course at college. In her 
first season in society she is called a debutante, a French word that 
means “one making a first appearance in society.” 

INTRODUCING A DEBUTANTE. 

The introduction may be made at an afternoon tea or reception, 
or at an evening reception and dance. It is usually made in Novem¬ 
ber, at the beginning of the winter gaieties. The affair is like any of 
the sort with the exception that the young lady’s name appears below 
her mother’s on the invitations, and she stands beside her mother to 
help receive the guests and to be introduced to those of her mother’s 
acquaintances who are unknown to her. The proper form of this and 
other invitations will be found in the article on “The Etiquette of 
Invitations.” 


430 





YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN IN SOCIETY 


431 


It is a proper and graceful attention for anyone who is invited to 
send flowers to the debutante. One of the charms of a coming-out 
party is the quantities of flowers in the rooms and the number of 
fresh young faces, as it is a pretty custom to ask other girl friends to 
help receive and to pour tea. The young lady who is Dress of the 
introduced should dress in white of some soft material, Ser^ri^ Und 
from silk mull to daintily embroidered marquisette Friends 
over silk, and made with a round Dutch neck and elbow sleeves, and of 
dancing length. She may carry a bouquet of white flowers but wears 
no jewels, unless there is a single string of pearls in the family. She 
wears white hose and slippers. The girls who “pour” should be sim¬ 
ilarly dressed in delicate colors. The debutante’s mother wears a 
handsome reception gown, high-necked and trained, in the daytime, 
and an evening gown, low cut or with bust and arms veiled, in the 
evening. She may wear jewels, but good taste forbids a hostess from 
outshining her guests in her own home. Ladies use face creams and 
powder, but not rouge. 

As at any other tea or reception, a guest arrives at any time within 
the hours specified. Gentlemen leave their hats and overcoats in the 
hall, but ladies keep on their hats and gloves, unless remaining for the 
dance, and no one stays more than half an hour. The latest comers 
chat with the receiving party until others arrive, when they pass on 
to mingle with other guests and to go to the refreshment table. While 
eating they slip off their gloves. 

HOW THE TABLE SHOULD BE SET. 

The table is beautifully set on the bare, polished oak or mahogany 
partly covered with lace and embroidered centerpiece and doilies. The 
flowers and candle shades should carry out some color scheme of 
white or pink or yellow, with green foliage, and the finest of china, 
silver and cut glass should be used. As refreshments The 
are taken by guests standing, they should be such as Tiley 

may be taken on one plate and with the help of a fork A 1,6 served 
and spoon. For a tea a green leaf of the best quality should be used, 
and served both in cups with sugar and cream, English fashion, and 
in tall engraved glasses, with lemon and sugar, Russian style. Besides 
the tea are tiny sandwiches in two or three varieties, olives, radishes, 
celery hearts, small cakes, salted almonds, mint paste, candied ginger 


YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN IN SOCIETY 


432 


and chocolate bonbons. At a reception, the refreshments are more 
varied. Instead of tea there may he bouillon in cups, hot or cold, 
creamed oysters or chicken croquettes or salad, small rolls, ices, frosted 
cake, fruit punch, besides the olives, nuts and bonbons. A string 
band or pianist may play softly behind a screen of palms. A pleasant 
ending of an afternoon affair is to have the young women who help 
receive remain to dinner, and to invite an equal number of desirable 
young men. At an evening reception both men and women wear 
evening dress, the ladies in gowns of dancing length. 

With such an entertainment a hostess pays all her social debts to 
those invited, and the list should include her entire visiting list. She 
vvho owes no calls, except where she has been entertained 

should Be at dinner. Her daughter is “out,” helps her mother 

invited receive at home, and should be included in all invi¬ 

tations. In very high society a debutante’s name appears on her 
mother’s visiting card, and she uses no personal card for a year. It is 
not good form for her to appear at any social affair without her 
mother or some other older lady as a chaperon. 


REASONS FOR THE CHAPERON. 

In all European countries the chaperon is universal, but custom 
differs widely in America, and properly so. Until recent years our 
young girls were allowed complete liberty. We boasted that they 
were perfectly capable of protecting themselves and that American 
men, if not so polished as foreigners, were more truly chivalrous. In 
small places where boys and girls grow up together, and everyone is 
known to each other, the custom continues, with some restrictions as 
to buggy riding and late hours. But in the cities, which grow larger 
and society more mixed, the strict chaperonage of young girls has 
become a necessity, as in London and Paris. The too lively young 
person has been put into the background, and society has gained in 
interest and elegance. Today, we scarcely recognize the picture of 
unchaperoned “Daisy Miller’’ and her foolish mother, in Henry James’ 
story; and those who fail to realize the peril of the unprotected, unad¬ 
vised girl in the “smart” society of today should read of the disaster 
that befell “Lily Bart” in Mrs. Wharton’s “House of Mirth.” 

Really, if she only knew it, a girl can have ever so much more 
fun and true liberty, under the wing of her mother or other older 


YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN IN SOCIETY 


433 


woman. She can go anywhere, see anything. She can travel, stay in 
resort hotels and join in all the gaieties, go to the charity ball, to the 
theatre and opera, and. take supper with a merry party Greater 
at midnight, in a public restaurant, and ride home in Liberty Under 

a taxi-cab. She can take tea in a bachelor artist’s Protection 

studio. She is taken to the proper places, meets only the right people. 
At a dance, her chaperon may seek the acquaintances of desirable 
young men and introduce them to her young charge, when the unchap¬ 
eroned girl is left to be a wall-flower. If she lacks beauty she is not 
neglected, and if she happens to be pretty and to have many admirers, 
such guardianship protects her from ill-natured gossip. No one dares 
snub her and scandal cannot touch her. A good chaperon is worth 
more, socially, to a young girl than great beauty or fortune. 

WHERE A CHAPERON IS NOT REQUIRED. 

A professional woman, a working girl, or a student is in business, 
and a society girl on a shopping trip or errand of charity is, also. They 
may properly do what they must do, and are protected by their work 
and respected. But a girl should be careful not to These 

meet young men “by accident,’’ as the stories have it, Exceptions 

in a gallery or store or library or on a lonely walk, and Prove the Rule 
remain to talk with him for hours unless she wishes to be talked 
about. Much more liberty is allowed the young woman of twenty- 
five or more, than to the young girl of eighteen or twenty; and a 
single woman of mature age, especially if she be at the head of a 
father’s or brother’s house, has die dignity and privileges of a married 
woman. She receives as a hostess and may properly chaperon young 
sisters and nieces. In traveling abroad, however, a single lady or a 
widow will find her position much more agreeable if she is in the com¬ 
pany of another lady or a married couple. 


MANNERS FOR MEN IN SOCIETY. 

A young man’s manner towards the young women of his acquaint¬ 
ance are just as definitely understood. No gentleman calls upon any 
lady unless he has been asked to do so, or he brings a letter of intro¬ 
duction from a mutual friend, is taken to the house by an intimate 
friend or has previously been asked to dinner. He cannot pay “atten- 


434 


YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN IN SOCIETY 


tions without intentions” to a young girl—that is, flirt with her. If 


interested in her especially, he must ask for her father 
and mother also, in calling at the house, or he may be 
so unlucky as to never find her “at home.” If 


When and 
How to 
Make Calls 


he wishes to take her to the theater or opera, he must include her 
mother in the invitation, or he is likely to be refused. He has the 
privilege of asking a common acquaintance to introduce him to any 
lady, but the friend should be careful to ask the lady’s permission. 

A young man should not make long or late calls on ladies. A 
mother may properly ask any young man to accompany herself and 
her daughter to a public place. In that case, she provides the tickets 
and the carriage. The young man so honored may repay the compli¬ 
ment by sending flowers and taking a box of bonbons to his hostess. 
He should study graceful ways to pay his social debts, and not be 
willing to accept dinner, dance and other invitations without making 
proper return. He can entertain by giving theater parties and sup¬ 
pers; take ladies out in his automobile; pay his calls promptly and 
often, and make gifts of flowers, bonbons and popular books, to the 
mothers as well as the daughters. He should not propose to take 
any lady to a place where he would not wish his own mother or sister 
to be seen. If a girl to whom he is not engaged should be so foolish 
as to give him her photograph, or to write him a gushing letter, he 
will not show these to other men, nor allow them to speak of his 
women friends in public places. A man who through vanity permits 
a slur on a woman’s name is a “cad” who is rebuked and dropped by 
other men, and women shrink from him in fear and loathing. 


There is no outward sign of true courtesy 
that does not rest o ?2 a deep moral founda¬ 
tion. 


—Goethe. 


Engagements and Weddings 


Difference Between American and European Ideas—Engagement Rings 
—Allowable Gifts by the Fiance—Payment for Wedding Expenses— 
When Invitations Should be Acknowledged—Dress and Duties of Those 
Who Take Part in the Ceremony—About the Rice and Slippers—Good 
Form in the Style and Use of Wedding Announcements. 


In one thing America has refused to import its manners from 
Europe. We do not “arrange” marriages. A girl is protected from 
flirtations, undesirable and fortune-hunting young men, but marriage 
for love is encouraged. When a young man of good character, 
education, agreeable manners and prospects in business, decides that 
he wishes to marry a certain girl, the opportunity to tell her so is 
always given him by her guardians. He proposes and is accepted 
before he “asks papa,” although, of course, no well bred young man 
or woman would become engaged without the approval of the parents 
of both families. 

The engagement should be announced at once to immediate 
relations on both sides. If living in the same city, the young man’s 
family calls on the family of the young lady, and invites them to din¬ 
ner. There should be no delay or lack of cordiality Announcing 
in welcoming the girl of a son’s choice. If living in the 
another place, the young man’s mother should write Engagement 
an affectionate letter, and ask the future daughter-in-law to visit 
her and her daughters. Later the girl sends personal notes to her 
own intimate girl friends, announcing the news, or she gives a 
luncheon to them and displays her engagement ring for the first 
time. For the ring a diamond solitaire is first choice, but it may 
be any jewel except a pearl, which suggests tears, or an opal, 
which is considered unlucky. A sapphire is very beautiful. Some 
weeks before the wedding a general announcement is made in the 
society columns of the local papers, in both cities, if the man and 
the girl live in different places. 

In this country a good deal of liberty is allowed the engaged 
couple. A girl may receive her fiance alone, but in a room which is 


435 




436 


ENGAGEMENTS AND WEDDINGS 


open to the family. She may drive with him in the daytime, in an 
open carriage or automobile, and appear at afternoon receptions, 
matinees, concerts or at art exhibits without a chaperon. She may 
lunch with him in a fashionable tea room, give him her photograph, 
correspond with him and visit his mother and sisters under their 
chaperonage. But she should not travel under his escort, nor stop 
Relations of i n same hotel with him, unless her mother is with 
Fiance and her, nor dine alone with him after dark, nor attend 

Fiancee evening entertainments with him alone, nor sit talk¬ 

ing alone with him in her own home until a late hour. This may seem 
strict, but engagements do not always end in marriage. For the 
same reason a young man may not give his fiancee anything of value 
beside the ring. He can shower her with flowers, books and confec¬ 
tionery, but should not give her so much as a pair of gloves to wear. 
If the engagement should be broken the ring should be returned. 

The groom’s wedding gift, usually a necklace, brooch or other 
jewelry, and as costly as his purse can buy, he presents on the wedding 
morning, and the bride wears it to the altar. He is allowed to send 
the bridal bouquet to her, pay for the wedding ring and license, and 
Gifts give the minister his fee. He may also give a souve- 

by the nir to the best man and ushers—a scarf pin—and 

Groom a locket or bangle to the bridesmaids. The bride’s 

family pays for everything else—the trousseau and household linen, 
which is marked with the bride’s maiden initials; the invitation and 
announcement cards, the decorations at home and church, the music, 
carriages and wedding breakfast or reception refreshments. This rule 
is as fixed as the Constitution of the United States. The bride may 
be poor, the bridegroom rich—still she has only the kind of wedding 
her family can pay for. 


WEDDING GIFTS AND INVITATIONS. 

Gifts may be sent to the prospective bride by relatives and in¬ 
timate friends at any time after the engagement is made public. Ac¬ 
quaintances may properly wait until the invitations are out. Presents 
that are bought are sent from the store, with the giver’s card in¬ 
closed. It is as well not to have silver marked, as the bride may be 
oversupplied with some articles and wish to exchange them. Before 


ENGAGEMENTS AND WEDDINGS 


437 


the wedding day the bride should write a personal note of thanks 
for every gift. Nothing excuses her from this duty. Invitations to 
a wedding should be sent out two or more weeks before the cere¬ 
mony. All the acquaintances of the family should be invited to a 
church wedding or none. ' Otherwise it is better to have a quiet home 
wedding and invite no one but the immediate families, 
and then send out announcement cards to all ac- should Be 
quaintances immediately afterwards. Invitations, invited 
announcements and the small cards to the reception, or the “At 
Home” card of the newly married pair should all be handsomely en¬ 
graved, on the finest quality of paper, and inclosed in an inner and 
outer envelope. Models are given in the forms of invitations at the 
end of this article. 

An invitation to a church or home wedding and reception re¬ 
quires no answer. One accepts by attending, or regrets the inabil¬ 
ity to do so by sending the personal card to arrive the morning of 
the ceremony. If invited to a wedding breakfast, however, you 
should accept or decline at once, as a seat is reserved for you at 
the table. 

“GOOD FORM” AT WEDDINGS. 

If a couple are married at home, and are leaving at once on a 
wedding journey, both should wear traveling suits, the bride in her 
hat, and removing her street gloves for the ring. For a full dress 
affair, at home or in church, in the daytime or evening, a bride is 
robed in a trained gown of pure white, high-necked and Dress of the 
long-sleeved, or with long gloves to meet her elbow Bride and 
sleeves. Her shoes, hose, gloves, fan, veil and wreath Groom 
should be white, and she may carry a shower bouquet of white 
flowers. For a dress wedding in the daytime, the bridegroom wears 
a frock coat of black broadcloth, light grey trousers, white vest and 
tie, pearl colored gloves and a silk hat. But after six in the evening, 
he should wear full evening dress of black broadcloth, low cut white 
waistcoat, white tie and gloves and pearl studs. 

At a church wedding the front pews are reserved for the fami¬ 
lies the groom’s relatives at the right, the bride’s at the left. At¬ 
tending the bridal couple is a best man and maid of honor, from 
four to eight ushers and an equal number of bridesmaids. In addi- 


438 


ENGAGEMENTS AND WEDDINGS 


tion, there may be two to four pages and flower girls, under ten 
of others years of age. The best man and ushers are dressed 
Taking Partin like the bridegroom but wear wedding favors in their 
the Ceremony button-holes, while lie wears one flower from the bride’s 
bouquet. The maid of honor may wear white and a picture hat of 
flowers or plumes, but the bridesmaids are usually dressed all alike 
in some delicate color, with hats, and made up in some picturesque 
style. Pages may be in black velvet cavalier costumes, the flower 
girls in Kate Greenaway gowns, bonnets and baskets. Women guests 
should wear reception dresses; the men frock coats in the daytime, 
full evening dress after night. 

The best man goes to church with the groom and waits at the 
altar with him for the bride. The maid of honor is escorted to the 
altar by the brother of the bride or groom, or by her own fiance, 
who steps aside. When the wedding march begins, the ushers lead 
the bridal procession up the white-satin ribboned aisle two and two, 
separate at the altar, half going to the right, half to the left. The 
bridesmaids follow, and separate to right and left. 
Then comes the bride on her father's arm. He gives 
her to the groom and then falls back. The bridal pair 
clasp hands and kneel before the clergyman. During the ceremony 
the maid of honor holds the bride’s bouquet and left glove, and the 
best man holds the groom’s hat, gives the ring to the minister and 
hands him his fee in a small envelope. He and the maid of honor 
sign the register as witnesses in the vestry, and stand nearest the 
bridal couple at the reception that follows. The groom takes the 
father’s place in the bridal carriage for the drive home. 

THE WEDDING BREAKFAST OR RECEPTION. 

In America a reception and buffet lunch at the bride’s home is 
usually given after a church wedding. When the house is small, 
however, the wedding breakfast to the near relatives and bridal at¬ 
tendants is often given. This is a pretty English custom. It is 
really a luncheon at which ladies keep on their hats. A suitable 
menu is chilled grape fruit or melon or unstemmed strawberries, 
What bouillon (hot or cold), raw oysters, hot birds, chicken 

should Be or lobster salad, ices, jellies, some kind of fruit punch 

served to c j r i n ] < the healths, the usual nuts, olives and con¬ 

fectionery, and, of course, the bride’s cake. For a wedding in sum- 


At 

the 

Ceremony 


ENGAGEMENTS AND WEDDINGS 


439 


mer at a country place, the breakfast may be served to many guests 
at small tables on the lawn. Small pieces of wedding cake are al¬ 
ready put up in dainty ribbon-tied boxes, and each guest takes one 
on leaving. On the departure ol the bride and groom only relatives 
and very intimate friends kiss her, and the shower of rice and old 
slippers is best omitted. It is not in the best taste, and horses have 
been frightened into running away by being pelted. Also, it is of¬ 
fensive to a lady to find her bridal baggage labelled so as to adver¬ 
tise the affair to strangers. Now and then, a wedding guest with a 
too hilarious sense of humor has found himself cut off the list of 
acquaintances of a newly married couple on their return home. 

SENDING OUT THE WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENTS. 

In sending out wedding invitations there is no way provided 
for telling friends when and where the newly married pair are to be 
found. If no large wedding is given, the announcement cards are 
sent out after the ceremony, the new address and the time when 
the couple may be found “at home” is put in the lower left-hand 
corner, or their personal joint card, with this information on it, is 
inclosed. Or, if the residence is undecided, they may wait until they 
have returned and established themselves in the new home and then 
send cards to all friends. Socially, the bride and groom are new 
people, and owe neither calls nor invitations to anybody. All ac¬ 
quaintances owe calls to them, and dinners, receptions, luncheons 
and teas are showered on them for three months. They return calls, 
but do not have to entertain until the next season. The bride should 
be especially attentive to her husband’s relatives and friends. 


Self-reverence, self-knowledge , self-control , 
These three alone lead life to sovereign 
power. 

—Alfred Tennyson. 


Calls, Introductions and Visits 


Proper Type for the Visiting Card—What to Put On It—Presenting the 
Card—Length of the Call—How Things Have Changed Since “Daisy 
Miller’s” Time—Dress—Customs Governing the Making of Introduc¬ 
tions—As to Shaking Hands—Relations of Hostess and Guest. 


A very high authority, both in this country and abroad, says 
that the fashion in visiting cards has changed very little in a century 
or more. In ordering her new cards, the bride should select the best 
quality of white, unglazed bristol board, in a size about two and 
one-eighth inches by two and seven-eighths. She should have them 
printed from a plate carefully engraved in small script, Old English 
or German text, whatever the fancy of the moment may be, but she 
can always use script if she prefers it. A married lady uses her hus¬ 
band’s full name, thus: “Mrs. John Sidney Payne”. And in the lower 
right-hand corner of her card she has her street address and her re¬ 
ceiving day. Her husband’s card, which she leaves with her own, in 
paying calls, (for American men are so busy that many of their social 
duties are attended to by proxy) is a much smaller oblong, in the 
same style, but nothing on it besides his full name. Middle initials 
are no longer used. 

A minister, a doctor, a judge, or a military or naval officer, may 
use his title on his card, but his wife may not. “Mrs. Dr.” is absurd. 
Even the wife of our President is simply Mrs. Woodrow Wilson or 
Mrs. Grover Cleveland. A widow may continue to use her husband’s 
Christian name, as does Mrs. Potter Palmer, or she may return to 


her maiden name, Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer, or 
she may drop all prefixes and call herself Mrs. Astor, 
as a late leader of New York society did. The wife 


About 
the Use of 
Titles 


of a son who is named for his father, is Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr., as 
long as her mother-in-law lives and uses the name. The eldest 
daughter in a family is Miss Blair. The younger daughters, when 
they come out, are Miss Margaret Blair and Miss Marie Louise Blair. 


440 




CALLS, INTRODUCTIONS AND VISITS 


441 


AS TO CALLS AND CARD LEAVING. 

Authorities differ on the etiquette of cards and calling, but most 
of them advise us to use a little common sense when in doubt. If 
you remember that your card is yourself, you will know that you 
should not give it to the lady upon whom you are calling if she her¬ 
self opens the door. Nor should you send it by the maid in houses 
where you are intimate, even if the maid is strange. Just give her 
your name and ask for the person you wish to see. In calling upon 
a new acquaintance, a lady may leave her own and her husband’s 
cards on the hall table, to remind her of the name, address and re¬ 
ceiving day. Cards should be left when a lady is not at home, one of 
each for the mistress of the house and one for the rest of the family. 

Because formal calls and card leaving are simply civilities, like 
bows on the street—the small change of society—many people make 
the mistake of thinking them stupid and meaningless. But if you 
think a moment you will see that you can hardly invite anyone to 
your house until you have paid the compliment of a call, nor would 
you feel sure of welcome in a house whose mistress had not called 
upon you. A chance introduction does not establish Reason for 
an acquaintance. A call begins an acquaintance, one the Formal 

call a year continues it, and to cease to call or leave Cal1 

cards ends it, unless the obligation to call is cancelled by an invita¬ 
tion. Many ladies with a large visiting list, who find even one call 
all around, every year, too much of a tax, pay all debts except dinner 
calls and calls on new acquaintances, by giving a large reception or 
a series of teas. 

But if you call, you should go to see everyone on your visiting 
list once a year; you should go on each lady s receiving day, between 
three and six in the afternoon, or with your husband between eight 
and ten in the evening. Don’t apologize for not having called be¬ 
fore, nor stay over twenty minutes. On your own receiving day be 
at leisure, and don’t keep a caller waiting without sending an apology. 
Don’t fuss about a caller’s belongings. A lady does not lemove her 
wraps, and a gentleman can look after his own hat and cane. It is 
a pleasant English fashion to serve tea from four to five. This cor¬ 
dial custom puts people at their ease and makes one s receiving day 

popular. 


442 


CALLS, INTRODUCTIONS AND VISITS 


WHO SHOULD MAKE THE FIRST CALL? 

The older resident of a place should call on the newcomer to 
welcome her; the older lady on the younger one, for her position in 
society is of the greater dignity. Everyone owes a first call to the 
bride and to the new minister’s wife. When there is no distinction 
of age or residence, either of two ladies may take the initiative. A 
first call must be made in person, and be returned in person within 
two weeks. A person who has been entertained at dinner must call 
on the hostess within one week. An unmarried man, of course, calls 
on ladies in person. He should ask for the mistress and master of 
the house, as well as for the young ladies. American society has 
passed the primitive stage of “Daisy Miller,” whose mother apolo¬ 
gized for coming into the parlor when Daisy had callers. If he finds 
people out, he should not turn down the corner of his card. It is 
understood that he has called in person. 

If a maid says that her mistress is not at home, no caller should 
ask where she is or when she will return, unless very intimate or 
0n the matter is important. And don’t take offense if 

Being you think some lady is at home. She may really be 

“At Home” out, or e i se no t p r 0 p er ly dressed. In either case, she is 
not at home to visitors. The uncertainty on the point seems to make 
the conventional phrase more agreeable than if a lady is at home 
and sends word: “Mrs. Allen is engaged and begs to be excused.” 
Some thoughtful ladies have the courteous habit of having maids 
say, “Mrs. Moore will be very sorry to have missed you. Her re¬ 
ceiving day is Tuesday.” In calling on a friend who is visiting people 
with whom you are not acquainted, ask for the hostess and leave 
a card for her. The acquaintance need not be continued. 


CORRECT DRESS FOR LADIES. 

When calling, in either the daytime or evening, a lady should 
wear her handsomest street gown, wrap and hat, a costume such as 
she would wear to church or an afternoon reception. Receiving in 
her own home, she should wear her prettiest house gown. A hostess 
should never outshine her guests. And this brings up the whole 
subject of suitable dress for all occasions. For ordinary street wear, 
nothing is in as good taste for a lady as a tailor-made suit. At an 
evening reception, dinner, dance or theatre, she should wear full dress 


CALLS. INTRODUCTIONS AND VISITS 


443 


in any becoming color from white to black, and in any rich material 
from lace to velvet. A young girl’s evening frocks should be light 
and simple, in dancing length, with elbow sleeves, and round or 
square necks cut out very little, if at all. Older ladies have their 
evening gowns trained and cut decollette and practically sleeveless, if 
they wish. But many follow the example of Mrs. Cleveland when 
she was a bride in the White House, and veil the bust and arms in 
lace, net and chiffon. Jewels should be used with discretion. If a 
lady has a large collection of diamonds and pearls, she does not wear 
them all at once except at the charity ball, or an opening night at* 
the opera. Then she is not so much an individual as a part of a 
brilliant picture. 

PROPER DRESS FOR GENTLEMEN. 

Correct dress is a simpler matter for a man than for a woman. 
It is impossible for him to overdress and he has a smaller chance to 
display bad taste. Men’s fashions change less, and a really good 
tailor is a reliable authority that a man can consult as confidently as 
a woman can consult a good stationer in ordering her engraved 
cards and invitations. Up to six o’clock a man wears a business suit, 
ordinarily. For church, a day wedding, reception, luncheon, funeral 
or other ceremonious occasion, he wears a black frock coat, grey 
trousers and silk hat. For dinner and all evening entertainments, he 
wears a full-dress suit of black broadcloth. There are men who do 
not look well in the dress coat, and compromise by wearing the din¬ 
ner or Tuxedo coat. With it should be worn the usual dress shirt 
and vest, pearl studs and white tie. The dinner coat is admissible 

at all but very formal affairs, such as the charity ball, and one’s own 

« 

“smart” church wedding. 

Both men and women should observe unity in their clothing. It 
is very bad form for a gentleman to wear high shoes, a derby hat 
and a colored four-in-hand tie with evening dress. A lady does not 
wear her diamond necklace when she goes shopping, nor heavy walk¬ 
ing shoes with a delicate trained gown to an evening party. It is 
in better taste to spend less on the gown, and have slippers, hose, 
gloves and hats that properly go with it. And it is better to have 
three dresses in the best materials, style and workmanship, than a 
dozen cheap and flimsy ones. Fashions change so often and so radi- 


444 


CALLS, INTRODUCTIONS AND VISITS 


cally, in women's clothes, that women of wealth and position have 
much smaller wardrobes than used to be thought necessary. Even 
the bride fits herself out in dresses, hats and wraps only for the com¬ 
ing season. 

WHOM SHALL WE INTRODUCE? 


This is a mooted question. It is undisputed that a hostess may 
introduce guests under her roof, and most people think she is failing 
in courtesy if she does not do so. To make sure that everyone is 
introduced to everyone else, at an evening party it is the custom for 
the host or hostess to take each guest by the arm as she arrives, 
leading her about the room and presenting her to everyone in turn. 
This is awkward and embarrassing to the guest and puts a spoke in 
every wheel of talk. It takes a company several minutes to recover 
and nobody remembers anybody’s name. In all European countries, 
being an invited guest under the same roof is an introduction, and in 
large cities in this country the custom is growing for people who 
meet in a house to converse freely with those nearest without pre¬ 
vious introduction. A good hostess watches as guests form groups 
and talk, goes about among them and makes introductions incident¬ 
ally. She may say: “I thought you would find Captain Clive conge¬ 
nial, Miss Deering, for he shares your enthusiasm for music.” Thus 
introductions are robbed of stiffness. 


At receptions, of course, where the hostess stands by the door 
to receive, callers are introduced to the guest of honor or the de¬ 
butante as they arrive. 

If anything, Americans are too generous and tolerant about 
giving introductions, and are apt to forget that people have a right 
to choose their acquaintances. If in doubt as to whether two people 
care to know each other, it is better to ask both, privately. A lady’s 
Care in permission must be asked in introducing a gentleman. 

Making In a way, you endorse the person you introduce, and 

introductions y OU should be careful about whom you stand sponsor 
for. In England, if a young man should ask a lady to whom he is 
•not well known to introduce him to a young girl, she may say with¬ 
out giving offense: “I am afraid I do not know you well enough to 
ask her mother’s permission.” And there we have one striking con¬ 
trast to what is permitted in most places in America. It is astonish- 


CALLS, INTRODUCTIONS AND VISITS 


445 


ing what a number of promiscuous young men acquaintances, who 
are unknown to her parents, a popular young girl can pick up. Girls 
should discourage the attention of young men who are unknown to 
their mothers and fathers. They can do this by the simple omission 
of an invitation to call at their homes. 

On being introduced, people shake hands or not, as they choose. 
Two men usually do, and the hostess and host shake hands with a 
new acquaintance in their own home. But many people, especially 
ladies, shake hands only with near relatives and intimate friends. But 
if you do shake hands, do it heartily, with a firm \vh en antl 
clasp. A hard grip makes the victim wince, but a How to 

limp, flabby hand is about as pleasant to hold as a shake Hands 

fish. A lifted arm, drooped finger tips and feeble wagging is an af¬ 
fected travesty that is, happily, going out. 

NEVER USE A FLIPPANT TONE. 

A flippant “how-de-do” or a “happy-to-meet-you”, said as me¬ 
chanically as a talking doll would say it, do not recommend anyone 
to a new acquaintance. You are not required to say anything—a 
smile and a bow are sufficient—and an air of deferential attention is 
more eloquent than many words. If you do speak, say something 
simple and cordial. When you introduce two people, mention some¬ 
thing in which both are interested, or make a graceful comment that 
starts the conversation naturally. 

It is the gentleman’s privilege to ask for an introduction to a 
lady, but it is the lady’s privilege to ask a gentleman to call. It is 
a very great compliment for a mother with an attractive young 
daughter to say to a young man: “We shall be glad to see you in 
our home. My daughter and I receive every Tuesday.” 

ETIQUETTE OF VISITING FOR HOSTESS AND GUEST. 

When guests are invited to stay in the house, it is now the cus¬ 
tom to ask them for a definite time—a week, a fortnight, or a week¬ 
end—that is, from Saturday to Monday. A week-end house party 
in a large country house, where there is driving, motoring, boating, 
tennis, golf, skating or other out of door amusements, is a jolly affair. 
The guest should be told what train to take and then be met at the 
station. She should accept at once, go when she is expected, and 
leave when the limit of the visit is reached. In this day of many 


446 


CALLS, INTRODUCTIONS AND VISITS 


interests and duties for women, a hostess pays you a compliment to 
ask you at all. She puts aside her other affairs and makes special 
plans for entertaining you. To postpone a visit or break the en¬ 
gagement for trivial reasons is the height of rudeness. 

A well-bred guest is pleased with whatever is done for her 
pleasure and enters cordially into all plans made for her. Where 
people entertain a great deal the hostess is usually engaged until 
luncheon, as she needs time to rest and attend to her duties. A guest 
Show Your should appear promptly at meals, disarrange none 

Appreciation of the habits of the family, nor ask extra attention 

of Hospitality from the servants. She should be blind and deaf to 
anything disagreeable that happens, and should not gossip afterwards 
about the hostess’ private affairs. On returning home a note should 
be written immediately, thanking the hostess for a pleasant visit, 
and later something should be done in return for it. City people 
are delighted to visit the country, but far too seldom does it occur 
to them to invite their country friends to visit them in the city. 
Unwillingness to return hospitality is just plain selfishness and peo¬ 
ple who are guilty of it are properly rebuked by not being invited a 
second time. 


'The courtesies of a small and trivial 
character are the ones which strike deepest 

to the grateful and appreciating heart. 

| Henry Clay. 


Dinner Parties and Luncheons 


The Severest Test of Social Talents—How the Table Should Be Set— 
The Guests and Their Places—Entering the Dining Room—Serving the 
Dinner—The Dinner Call—Settings and Service of the Luncheon. 


To give a large, successful dinner party, with every detail in 
“good form”, is the severest test of a lady’s talents and social ex¬ 
perience. The best preparation for this is to be used, from childhood, 
to properly served dinners, however simple, and to perfect table man¬ 
ners. The setting of the table is an art that takes a cultivated taste 
and a mathematical eye. When but one maid is kept, the mistress 
of the house or her daughter should arrange the family dinner table 
every evening. Women of wealth often prefer to train their waiting 
maids in this duty but they inspect the work and give the last touches 
when giving a dinner party. 

The finest and whitest of dinner cloths should be used, and of a 
size almost to reach the floor. For round tables there are round 
cloths edged with heavy linen lace. The napkins are three-quarters 
of a yard square, carefully folded and not in fancy shapes, in ironing, 
with the worked monogram on the upper corner. The centerpiece 
of flowers should be arranged low so as not to hide guests from each 
other; and the lighting should be softly shaded, from candles evenly 
spaced on the table, or from a canopied electric rj^ Table 

light above. If gas is used, the ventilation should be and its 

especially good, for gas burns up oxygen. The silver, Setting 
china and glass should be shining, and in delicate patterns and grace¬ 
ful shapes, even if not of an expensive quality. It is more interesting 
if the place plates and each course set is different, but a dinner set 
is more enonomical. White with gold edges never goes out of style 
because it harmonizes with all decorations and foods. 

The places should be evenly spaced and all arranged exactly 
alike. In the middle of each is a place plate, to be removed when the 
first course is served; or there is a place card that any clever high 
school girl can draw and decorate. At the top of each place are ar¬ 
ranged the spoons for the iced grape fruit, soup, dessert and coffee. 

447 




448 


DINNER PARTIES AND LUNCHEONS 


The napkin is placed at the right. Behind it is a small bread and 
butter plate, for bread, olives, etc. Butter is not served at a formal 
dinner. At the left is the dinner knife, and the forks placed in the 
order of their use—oysters, fish, roast, salad, game, dessert. If there 
is a second knife, it is meant to be used for separating bones from 
fish, or for cutting a green salad. Drinking glasses stand behind the 
forks in a row. Stemmed goblets, uniform in style but of graduated 
sizes, are most elegant for dinner use. Besides water, grape juice, 
Apolinaris and other temperance drinks may be served. 

PLACING GUESTS AT TABLE. 

Guests should arrive fifteen or twenty minutes before the hour 
named in the invitation. To fail to go when you have accepted, or 
to be late, is inexcusable, and one who offends in that way is not 
likely to be invited again. Think of that vacant place in the beauti¬ 
fully set table! The hostess tells each gentleman privately which 
lady he is to take out and sit next at table. The host leads the way 
with the guest of honor for the evening, or with the oldest or most 
distinguished lady. The hostess brings up the rear with the chief 
man guest. Host and hostess face each other from the ends or the 
middle of the sides of the table. The guests find their places by the 
names on the place cards and every one sits down in a gay flutter 
of talk and laughter. If the guests are well chosen this continues 
throughout the meal. A dull dinner party is a dreary bore. Con¬ 
versation is general but each guest is especially responsible for en¬ 
tertaining his or her partner. 

HOW DINNER IS SERVED. 

When the guests sit down there is nothing on the table to eat 
except olives, nuts, mint paste, jellies, etc., and such things as are 
passed during the meal in sparkling little cut glass or decorated china 
dishes that add to the beauty of the table. The dinner may be a 
simple one, of four courses, or it may be elaborate. Any good cook 
book will give a variety of menus and the order of service. But 
whether simple or not, the courses are served on the plates, by the 
butler or waitress, from the pantry. Vegetables and small dishes are 
passed to the left, for the guests to help themselves. They are put 
directly on the plate, small sauce dishes not being used as savoring 
of hotels and restaurants. No carving is done at the table, except 


DINNER PARTIES AND LUNCHEONS 


449 


the turkey at a family Christmas dinner. This leaves the host and 
hostess as free to enjoy themselves as the guests. 

One may omit any course, but should not refuse to be served. 
If he trifles with the food and is interested in the talk, no one notices 
that he is not eating. No one should ask for a second helping of 
anything. This keeps everyone else waiting. If a hostess is obliged 
to speak to a waitress she should catch her eye and speak low. For 
her to rebuke a waitress before guests is ill-bred, be- Things 
cause it humiliates the girl and makes everyone feel That May 

uncomfortable. If a guest should upset a glass of Happen 

grape juice or a cup of coffee, the hostess should be stone-blind to 
the accident. A trained waitress will come along casually and lay 
a napkin or doily over the stain. The hostess should not notice any 
delay or mistake in the service. A strike may be threatening in the 
kitchen but she is serene. 

A dinner of many courses, eaten leisurely, may take two or three 
hours to serve. That is a visit in itself, and guests may not remain 
more than half an hour in the drawing room. However, it is best 
for one to wait until the party breaks up, before going. Thank your 
hostess for a pleasant evening, but don’t thank her for the dinner. 
Shake the host’s hand and bow yourself out. Then pay your dinner 
call within one week. 

THE LADIES LUNCHEON. 

A ladies’ luncheon is similar to a dinner except that it is given 
about one o’clock, is not so heavy, and the polished table is only par¬ 
tially covered with a handsome centerpiece, tray cloth and doilies 
under the plates and glasses. From three to five courses are suffi¬ 
cient. Often the ladies keep on their hats and simply remove their 
gloves at the table. A luncheon in a down-town tea room, followed 
by a matinee party to some popular play, is a delightful way for a 
chaperon to entertain several young ladies. 


We should he as courteous to a man as 
we are to a picture , which we are willing 
to give the advantage of the best light. 

—Emerson. 


Good Form in Correspondence 


Color of Letter Paper—Monograms and Embossing—About Your Hand¬ 
writing—Asking Favors of Strangers—The Form of Letters—The Sig¬ 
nature—Eccentric Ways of Writing—Position of the Stamp. 


Everyone has occasion to write letters and notes of business, 
friendship and courtesy, and should be supplied with proper materials. 
Paper, ink and pens of the best quality are not expensive, and it is in 
bad form to use anything else. Postal cards are correct for imper¬ 
sonal messages and business notes; linen writing pads, with envelopes 
to fit the folded sheets, are convenient for generous family letters, but 
ruled lines are barred for any purpose. For social correspondence 
note paper, of which there are three sizes, in cream-laid or white 
linen bond paper, is first choice. If you wish to have something in¬ 
dividual that friends will always recognize as yours, it is in good 
stvle taste to use the thin foreign paper, or to select a 

of the French grey or delicate robins’ egg blue. And you 

stationery ma y p ave your address engraved for the top of the 

sheet, or your initials or monogram stamped in the upper left-hand 
corner from a carefully-made die. Black lettering is always in good 
taste, but dark blue looks better on light blue, moss green or silver 
on French grey and gold on cream. Or the letter may simply be 
embossed—raised—on a heavy quality of paper and left uncolored. 
You should tell the stationer if you want the address or monogram 
on the first page or the fourth. For notes of one page or a slight 
turn over, a touch of elegance seems to be given by beginning on 
the last page. 

A business or other formal letter should be typewritten, if possible. 
But social letters and notes must be written by hand. While hand¬ 
writing should have character and style, and not appear like a copy¬ 
book, it should not be freaky. Few people are fond of making out 
As to Chinese puzzles. Especially should names and ad- 

Your dresses be plainly written. Some people apparentlv 

Handwriting cultivate signatures that might be “Nebuchadnezzar" 
or just “John Smith.” The date and the writer’s full address should 


450 




GOOD FORM IN CORRF.SPONDF.NCE 


451 


always be written in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. For 
notes it is better form to spell the month and day out in full. In 
writing to a stranger about your own affairs, if you want an answer, 
you should enclose a stamp or a stamped and self-addressed envelope. 
No one puts a stranger to expense in matters that do not concern 
him. 

FORMAL AND SOCIAL LETTERS. 

A formal letter should be begun with the full name and address 
of the person written to, thus: “Mr. Lawrence Bassett, 171 LaSalle 
Street, Chicago, Ill.”, arranged compactly in three lines at the left. 
Below is ‘‘Dear Sir,” or, it is good form to begin a business letter 
directly without “Dear Sir” or “Dear Madam”, and then put the 
name and address of the person written to at the end, below and to 
the left of your own signature. “Dear Sir” is the formal style, but 
“Dear Mrs. Owens” or “Dear Alice” is familiar and is used only in 
writing to friends. If Mrs. Owens is only an acquaintance, she should 
be addressed as “My dear Mrs. Owens”. A business The 
letter ends with “Yours very truly,” “Yours respect- Beginning ana 
fully” or some other courteous expression. “Very the End 
sincerely yours” is warmer but is properly used with business houses 
with which one has been on long and good terms, with acquaintances 
and with friends. With relatives or intimate friends, one should use 
“Affectionately yours”, “With love” or any term that correctly ex¬ 
presses your real feelings. The full name should be signed at the 
end. A married woman signs her own name, thus: “Margaret Boyd 
Monroe”. If the letter is to a stranger who does not know how to 
address her, she should put [Mrs. John Dixon Monroe] in brackets 
below and to the left of her signature. An unmarried woman indi¬ 
cates the fact by putting [Miss] in brackets before her name. Any 
woman, married or unmarried, is addressed as “Dear Madam” in a 
letter, by a stranger. 

A letter should be begun on the first page of the sheet, and the 
pages should be used consecutively. To skip around is freaky, and 
confusing to the reader. The paper should not be turned, with the 
writing across on one page and up and down on the next. Nor 
should one write in small characters all around the margin. The 
only thing that is more irritating is a “plaid” letter, where the page 


452 


GOOD FORM IN CORRESPONDENCE 


is covered twice, in opposite directions. No one is so poor that he 
must pay his friend so shabby a compliment. 

And if you think twice before speaking, think five times before 
writing. Don't write anything that you may have to explain or 
that you are likely to regret. The letter that a writer asks to have 
burned is usually the one that is carefully preserved. And remarks 
that are jokes in talk, when the merry eye and 
Breeding on smiling lips warm them, are often wounding on cold 

Pa P er paper. Don’t try to do fine writing. Write simply 

and sincerely as you would talk, say only what you mean, but be sure 
never to put anything ill-humored or discourteous on paper. And each 
letter should be answered in kind—a formal letter formally, a friend¬ 
ship letter cordially. This is the only way in which you can treat the 
friends who are far away from you as courteously as you do those 
who are near. Christmas letters, notes and cards are really long dis¬ 
tance calls. 

Letters of introduction and messages carried by friends should 
not be sealed. Seal all other letters securely, but do not use wax 
unless you are expert in its use. In addressing a letter put the full 
name on one line, the street number and the street on the line be¬ 
low and the city and abbreviated state on the third line. For a small 
place, the town, county and state are the proper order. Have them 
all compactly arranged, on the lower half of the envelope, neither 
crowded nor sprawled. On a registered or special delivery letter or 
package, the sender’s name and address should be plainly written in 
the upper left-hand corner. A letter meant for a particular person, 
in a business office, where it may be opened in the routine work of 
a clerk, should be marked “Personal” in the lower left-hand corner. 
Of course, no one opens any one’s private letter in a family. 

Put the stamp in the upper right-hand corner, where it is the 
most convenient for the mail clerk to cancel. And set the stamp 
right side up. In England, it is thought to be an act of gross disre¬ 
spect to turn the king’s head upside down. We should feel the same 
way about Washington, Lincoln and other national heroes whose 
heads appear, beautifully engraved on our stamps. Any act, however 
small—as the putting on of a stamp—that is careless or thoughtless or 
slovenly or undignified, is bad manners. 


GOOD FORM IN CORRESPONDENCE 


453 


Now, if you will re-read the opening paragraphs of the first arti¬ 
cle on good manners, you will be able to think out the reasons that 
lie back of all the social observances that go to make up “good form”. 
Back of the wish to give pleasure and not pain to others, lies un¬ 
selfishness, kindness. Back of simplicity, naturalness in manner and 
speech lie self-respect, that feels no necessity of appearing to be other 
than a man is. Behind serenity that is not to be surprised or vexed 
or offended lie self-control and personal dignity. Back of ease and 
tact and unfailing civility lie kindness and self-forgetfulness. 

“A gentleman makes no noise, a lady is serene,” says our 
great gentleman, Emerson. Behind really good manners lies spiritual 
beauty and moral worth. Do not doubt it, although it is true that 
people of no beauty or depth of character often observe all the rules 
of polite society through policy. Aren’t you glad they do? Think 
how unendurable they would be if they did not. And continual prac¬ 
tice of good manners cannot but improve their minds and hearts. 
And those who think that, in a democracy like ours, all men are equal 
should remember that equality applies only to political rights and the 
opportunity to rise. The constitution opens the door of no man’s 
house. Socially, one man is as good as another only if he behaves as 
well. 


Good breeding is benevolence in trifles , 
or the preference of others to ourselves in 
the daily occurrences of life. 

—Lord Chatham. 


Etiquette of the Invitation 


Wedding Invitations and Announcements—The Reception—Invitations 
to a Debut—For a Private Dance—Dinner Invitations—Ladies’ Lunch¬ 
eons—Garden Parties—Wedding Anniversaries—Complimentary Cards 


Invitations to all formal entertainments should be printed from en¬ 
graved plates. For weddings and other large affairs of ceremony, 
the wording is in the third person. The wedding invitation and an¬ 
nouncement are on heavy cream-laid note paper that folds once, is 
enclosed in an inner and outer envelope, and is usually sent by mail. 
The lettering is in script or in old English or German text, whatever 
is the fashion of the moment. The following is the proper arrange¬ 
ment : 





454 




ETIQUETTE OF THE INVITATION 


455 


A small card may be enclosed on which is engraved: 

<•* r><S tflrvc&ancrs QtfvtiMie*'' 

<l3'5aI 7"3<f<ry , 


A>rv 


1 his is to keep out people who are not invited. A second small card 
reads: 

U'm'j/t/tsm/ 



/twiprist/f/r/e/y ' wry-' 

353 &<rSt‘d^>r/y -J 

No answer is required. One who is invited accepts by attending. If 
unable to go, the personal cards of those invited should be mailed to 
the bride’s father and mother, since they issued the invitation, to arrive 
the morning of the ceremony. An invitation to a wedding breakfast 
or supper should be accepted or declined at once, because a seat is 
reserved at the table. The note should be written on note paper, in the 
same formal style, thus: “Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Payne accept with 
pleasure the kind invitation of Mr. and Mrs. William Ellery Bond to 
the wedding breakfast of their daughter Marguerite, on Wednesday, 
June Fifth.” 

On returning from the wedding journey a newly married pair send 
out their joint card, to notify friends of their new address: 

. Sd/Wtcrcl CicmcrM J^cnrolifv 


(jU dvom^ 


S.ouik J^criwv 

0 l cav Ojorlc 


THE WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT. 


A wedding announcement is sent out to all acquaintances in case 


456 ETIQUETTE OF THE INVITATION 

a small home wedding was given, and only relatives and very intimate 
friends were invited to the ceremony. Following is the form: 




ot/Jerrts/ /if ;/* (f 


0& 



o' 


People in the same city who are honored with the announcement 
card should call. Those who live elsewhere should write congratula¬ 
tions. 


CARDS FOR A DEBUTANTE’S RECEPTION. 


Following is the form of invitation to a debutante’s reception: 








'neve/ 


ETIQUETTE OF TIIE INVITATION 


457 


This is engraved on a square, or nearly square, card that fits the 
envelope. If the reception is given in the evening, the invitation is 
issued in the names of the host and hostess. If the letters R. S. V. P. 
appear on it, they mean that an answer is requested. These letters are 
an abbreviation of four French words meaning “please reply.” The 
tendency is toward greater simplicity in the use of language and 
“please reply” is frequently used as: 





This form of invitation is suitable for any reception. If it is given 
for a lady who is visiting from another city, her name appears below 
that of the hostess, as the guest of honor. 


A PRIVATE DANCE. 

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Livingston 
request the pleasure of the company of 
Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Schuyler and the 
Misses Schuyler 

On Thursday evening, December Twenty-first. 


Cotillion at ten K.z.ir .r. 

Here, engraved forms are used, with a blank space left for names 
of guests. An answer is required. No one speaks of a private dance 
as a ball. The word is reserved for large, semi-public dances. When 
people entertain often at dinner, engraved forms are kept on hand, 


458 


ETIQUETTE OF THE INVITATION 


the names ox the guests being filled in. But if the guests at dinner 
are few, many ladies write notes of invitation. If a large formal dinner 
is given the third person is used. 

Mr. and Mrs. Worthington Smith 
request the pleasure of 
Mr. and Mrs. Heath’s company at dinner, 

January ninth, at seven o’clock 
159 Lincoln Parkway. 

The dinner invitation is usually sent by messenger. A reply should 
be written at once and in the same style, stating that “Mr. and Mrs. 
George Heath accept with pleasure the polite invitation of Mr. and 
Mrs. Smith to dinner on the ninth of January, at seven o’clock,” or 
“regret that a previous engagement deprives them of the pleasure, etc.” 

To intimate friends an informal note may be mailed: 

Dear Mrs. Heath — 

Mr. Smith and I would he glad to have you and Mr. Heath dine with 
us on Tuesday, January the ninth, and to meet my friend Miss Ritchie, zi'ho 
is visiting us, from Denver. The party will be small and full dress is not 
required. 

Sincerely yours 

Frances I^cc Smith. 

A LADIES’ LUNCHEON. 

Mrs. Seymour Hozmrd 
requests the pleasure of 
Mrs. Avery’s company at Luncheon, 

February twelfth, at one o’clock, 

67 Riverside Drive. 

In honor of Mrs. William Dean of Los Angeles. 

An answer, in the same style, should be sent immediately. 

A GARDEN PARTY AT A SUBURBAN HOME. 

Mr. and Mrs. Edward Brezvstcr, Jr. 
request the pleasure of 
Mr. and Mrs. Howard’s company 
on Thursday, 

Ju ly tzven ty-sez'cn th, 
at four o’clock. 

Garden Party. Lakezvood, New Jersey. 

Carriages zinll meet the train arriving from New York at 3:45. 


ETIQUETTE OF THE INVITATION 


459 


This is a reception on the lawn, with refreshments cn buffet , 
under a tent or on a veranda. No answer is required, but if unable to 
go you should send card. Do not write "regrets” on the card, nor 
anything else. 

WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES 
1885 1910 

Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Blair 
request the pleasure of your company 
on Thursday, June twenty-fourth, 
at eight o'clock. 

Silver Wedding. 

Hamilton Blair. Caroline Ellis. 

This should be printed in silver, on white; for the golden wed¬ 
ding, in gold. The form is the same for all wedding anniversaries. 
The two dates appear in the upper corners, the name of the bride and 
groom in the lower. If one wishes to do so a line may be added: “No 
presents.” The affair is a reception with a buffet supper, music and 
flowers, and is usually very happy and gay. 

Invitations to teas, card parties and small affairs are often written 
on the personal card of the hostess. 

COMPLIMENTARY CARDS. 

Introductions inay be made in a gracefully written note, or by 
writing on one’s visiting card: “Introducing Miss Eleanor French.” 
The card may be presented in person, or mailed, with the holder’s card, 
if she is visiting in a strange city. The lady to whom the introduction' 
is sent should call on the lady introduced, or invite the stranger to 
her house. 

Complimentary invitations to weddings and receptions are sent to 
families in mourning, but not to dinners or luncheons. No replies are 
expected, nor return of courtesies for a year. 

In announcing the birth of a child, a tiny card, engraved with the 
name of the baby, and the date in the lower left corner, is tied with 
white baby ribbon, through perforations, to the larger card of the 
parents, and mailed in an envelope that fits the card, to all acquaint¬ 
ances. This is properly answered by the personal card on which may 
be written anything appropriate. 

A card should .always be enclosed with a gift of flowers, books, 
bonbons, etc., and should be gracefully acknowledged. 


THE BOY SCOUTS 


/ believe the treatment you have accorded the subject will be both inter¬ 
esting and instructive. It should prove readable and understandable to all 
classes and ages of readers. 


Secretary Editorial Board, Boy Scouts of America. 

“ Scout” used to mean the one on watch for the rest. IVe have made 
the scout an expert in Life-craft as well as Wood-craft, for he is trained in 
the things of the heart as well as head and hand. Scouting we have made 
to cover riding, swimming, tramping, trailing, photography, first aid, camp¬ 
ing, handicraft, loyalty, obedience, courtesy, thrift, courage and kindness. 
Whether you be farm boy or shoe clerk, newsboy or millionaire’s son, your 
place is in our ranks. 



Chief Scout. 




A few years ago a committee of boys canvassed a city neighbor¬ 
hood to raise a small sum of money to be used in fitting up a club room. 
The first man they approached was a merchant who had been born on 
a pioneer farm. When the boys explained that they needed a gymna¬ 
sium for their physical development, and a room for quiet games and 
reading in the evenings, the old man glared at them. 

“Need exercise, do you? Go and saw wood for your mother.” 

Those twentieth century boys laughed. They lived in tiny cot¬ 
tages on twenty-foot lots, or in small flats in big tenement buildings. 
Not one of them had ever seen a stick of wood to burn, nor a garden to 
hoe and weed, nor a cow to milk. 

“Then get a job in a store. I was sweeping out a country store and 
building the fires when I was twelve years old.” 


460 






THE BOY SCOUTS 4QJ 

“A boy isn’t allowed to work now, until he’s fourteen, and not a 
full day until he’s sixteen,” said the spokesman. 

HOW IT USED TO BE WITH BOYS. 

“Well, well, I guess that’s so, and the work now is done in fac¬ 
tories instead of out-of-doors, and it isn’t good for a boy to be shut up. 
It was worth while being a boy fifty years ago. I could ride a horse 
to water, carry in wood, and drop corn behind a plow when I was four 
years old. At ten I could curry a horse, clean a stable, milk a cow, saw 
wood, hoe the garden and turn a grindstone. I could ride and shoot 
and swim and fish and go on snow-shoes like an Indian; and find my 
way in the woods by blazes on the trees, and by the stars, catch and 
cook my own supper and make a good shelter and bed. I knew all the 
wild plants and birds and animals. A boy had to rely on himself in 
those days and be of use to others, and it made a man of him. The 
good old chores and sports are all gone. No wonder the boys are 
good for nothing. I’ll have to look into this.” 

HOW IT IS WITH BOYS TODAY. 

He did look into it. He found, as every other man and woman 
who has investigated the matter has found, that the conditions of living 
have all changed, and that boys and parents are equally the victims of 
circumstances. Aside from the hours in school the growing boy has no 
duties. No real use can be made of him in the home. Living quarters 
are so cramped that the street is his only playground. There he has 
nothing to do that is interesting or important, nothing to play with. 
There is nothing that he can get by his own exertions, not even inno¬ 
cent fun. So he loiters around saloons and cheap theatres, is educated 
in evil, spends money that he does not earn, reads yellow newspapers 
and vicious books, smokes cigarettes, joins a “gang” to satisfy his love 
of adventure, and gets into trouble with the police. In a word, he 
degenerates physically, mentally and morally. And yet, at heart, the 
boy is the same as the sturdy, honest, useful boy of an early day. All 
he needs is a square deal—the space, the freedom, and the healthy 
outlet for his energies. 

ORIGIN OF THE BOY SCOUTS. 

The idea which underlies the Boy Scouts is not one which orig¬ 
inated with any one man or set of men. For years men have been 


162 


THE BOY SCOUTS 


working with boys—some in one way and some in another. Ernest 
Thompson-Seton, the naturalist, worked with boys along the lines of 
woodcraft and Indian life. Dan Beard, the illustrator and well-known 
author of boys’ books, simultaneously was working with boys along the 
lines of pioneering, handicraft and out-door life. Byron W. Forbush, 
Ph. D., was also dealing with boys along the lines of hero worship and 
in imitation of the knightly life that centered around the Round Table 
of King Arthur. In the Young Men’s Christian Association, Edgar 
M. Robinson was standing for the four-fold development of the boy 
and for the boy’s education for the duties of life and citizenship. 
Thomas Chew, the President of the Federated Boys’ Clubs and the 
Superintendent of the Fall River Boys’ Club, was working with a large 
number of boys along social and moral lines. Besides these, a whole 
host of others in the social settlements and playgrounds were touching 
the lives of boys for the purpose of making better men. The idea that 
underlay the work of all of these men was the same, but they differed 
widely in the conception of the idea and the method of its application. 

Lieutenant-General Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, K. C. B., 
stirred by the sight of forty-six per cent of all the boys in England 
growing up without adequate knowledge of any useful occupation, 
made a study of all the methods for helping boys already in the field, 
and connected them together by an appeal to boys for service to the 
community. 

The General, in an address at a banquet tendered to him in New 
York, said: 

“You have made a little mistake, Mr. Seton, in your remarks to 
the effect that I am the Father of this idea of Scouting for boys. I 
may say that you are the Father of it, or that Dan Beard is the 
Father. There are many Fathers. I am only one of the Uncles, I 
might say. . . . The scheme became known at home. Then it 
was that I looked about to see what was being done in the United 
States, and I cribbed from them right and left, putting things as I 
found them into the book.” 

The Boy Scout idea, then, originated in America, and it is most 
fitting and appropriate that we Americans should be its most enthusi¬ 
astic supporters, since this country of ours is not merely its birth¬ 
place, but is the country above all others in which it should grow the 
fastest and do the most good. 


THINGS THE BOY SCOUTS DO 


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IT.S rtf 

How Boy 
Scouts study 
tracks: Tree 
bird and bird 
living partly 
on ground. 

Which is 
which ? 




Position of 
right hand in 
taking the oath 


’ • ■'V-VW'* 



5 w.& < > - ^ 


Ernest Thompson-Seton, General Baden Powell 
and Dan Beard, Scout “Fathers.” 


Patrol badges. 
The upper is 
the badge of 
the “Blue 
Herons,” the 
lower of the 
"Blue 
Buffaloes.” 



Boy Scouts make 
a fire with rubbing- 
sticks in from live 
to ten minutes. 

Pass leather thong 
taut around drill; 
put lower point of 
drill in pii at top 
of notch in !ire¬ 
board and hold 

socket with left 

hand. Fire-board 

notch should rest 
on a chip or thin 
wooden tray (9). 

Hold bow by han¬ 
dle end in right 
hand, steadv hoard 

under left foot 

. 1 r Drawn by Ernest Thompson-Seton. 

“gainst °]eft knee. HOW TO BUILD A FTRE WITH RUBBING STICKS. 
Draw bow back and forward, full length, with steady, even strokes. Ground-up wood 
will run out of side of notch, falling on tray. At first it is brown, in two or three 
Illustrations Copvriehted bv Bov Scouts of America 


















































THINGS THE BOY SCOUTS DO 

seconds black, and in five or six seconds gives off cloud of smoke. Then fan gently 
with hand and in a few seconds you will see a glowing coal in the middle of dust. 
Take about a teaspoonful of shredded cedar wood, previously prepared, wrap it in bark 
fiber or shredded rope, hold it on coal, and lifting tray and all, blow it until it blazes. 
Carefully add birch bark shreds or pine splinters, and your fire is made! 

Figure i is a simple bow—a bent stick, about 27 inches long and inch thick, with 
stout leather thong. In No. 2 thong at handle end goes through disc of wood to 
tighten by hand pressure against disc while using. Figs. 3 and 4a show drill sockets. 
No. 5 is a fancy one. Here (4-4a) is a soapstone socket let into wood and fastened with 
pine gum. Top of drill should be greased before using. It should be 12 to 18 in. long 
and about V\ in. thick, roughly eight-sided so thong will not slip. Best drill wood is 
old, dry brash, but basswood, white or red cedar, tamarack, and sometimes even white 
pine, will do. 

MERIT BADGES AND HOW THEY ARE WON. 

To win a Merit Badge a Scout must show 
that he knows certain things and that he 
can apply his knowledge. To win an elec¬ 
tricity badge, the first shown on left, he 
must, among other things, illustrate, by ex¬ 
periment, the laws of electrical attraction 
and repulsion and name three uses of direct 
and tell how it differs from alternating 
current. 

Machinery Badge : State principles 
underlying use and construction of lathe, 
steam boiler and engine, drill press and 
planer. 

Mining: Know and name fifty minerals; 
define watershed, delta, drift, fault, glacier, 
terrace, stratum and dip. 

Ornithology : Identify by appearance or 
note forty-five different kinds of birds in 
one day and make a good clear photograph 
of some wild bird. 

Photography : Understand theory and 
use of lenses, construction of camera, and 
action of developers; make a recognizable 
photograph of any wild bird larger than a 
robin, while on its nest; or a wild animal 
in its haunts; or a fish in water. 

Public Health : Draw diagram showing 
how flies carry disease; how to co-operate 
with the Board of Health in preventing 
disease; describe garbage disposal. 

Personal Health : Describe care of 
teeth, proper eating and effect of alcohol 
and tobacco on growing boys. 

Aviation : Know theory of aeroplanes, 
balloons and dirigibles; describe various 
types of aeroplanes and their records. 

Agricultltre : Identify injurious insects 
and tell liow best to handle them; have a 
general knowledge of farm work and of 
dry farming and irrigation. 

Civics : Know how president, vice-presi¬ 
dent, senators and congressmen are elected, 
the various departments of government as 
represented in the president’s cabinet. 











THE BOY SCOUTS 


4(13 

l he movement has now spread over all the world and has enrolled 
hundreds of thousands of boys. But it is most active in America and 
England and all the English-speaking colonies. There are several 
hundred thousand members led by many thousand Scout Masters. 
Most of the National departments, many of the states and all of the 
big public movements are actively co-operating with the Scout move¬ 
ment. 

WHAT THE BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT MEANS. 

The impression that many people have, that the real purpose of 
the Boy Scout movement is to train future soldiers, is wrong. It is 
intended first to give the boy, deprived by modern industry of his 
ancient rights, a square deal, to fill his vacant or mischievously em¬ 
ployed hours with healthy, absorbing interests; to give him a better 
developed body, more acute senses, a more alert and resourceful mind, 
and to help him grow up into a more useful, responsible man and patri¬ 
otic citizen. No guns, swords, gauntlets, whips, spurs or any purely 
military equipment are allowed, and no military drilling is prescribed. 
Target shooting with a bow and arrow, that a boy may make for him¬ 
self, is encouraged. But he stalks game only with an opera glass, and 
takes shots only with the photographic camera. Honors are for feats 
of skill, results of serious study and deeds of humanity. They are to 
be won only by courage, industry, strength and honesty. Every badge 
stands for clean living and sustained effort. 

HOW TO BECOME A BOY SCOUT. 

With the boy who reads this the first question would naturally 
be: “How can I become a Boy Scout?” There is no difficulty about 
it, for it is desired to enlist as many boys as possible. Information 
and practical help are freely given, on request in person or by letter, 
at the National Headquarters, which are located in New York 
City. There are Scout Councils in all the large cities in the country, 
and in many populous towns and counties; and local committees are 
being established in villages and city districts. The official handbook 
of The Boy Scouts of America is to be found or ordered in any book¬ 
store, and is on the shelves of most public libraries. Any boy, any¬ 
where, who is between the ages of twelve and eighteen, can easily 
learn how to get into touch with the nearest local Scout Council, and 
how to join, or even to form a new patrol. But usually a new patrol is 


464 


THE BOY SCOUTS 


formed by a young man who is interested in being a big brother to 
younger boys. He applies for an appointment as Scout Master, quali¬ 
fies for the position and then acts as a recruiting officer to enroll and 
train a patrol. He can work in his leisure hours, with any group of 
boys, in any place most convenient for him and them. There are boys 
everywhere who are eager for the fascinating work and play. 

Scout patrols may be formed either with or without connection 
with some religious or educational institution. The easiest way to 
become a Boy Scout is to join a patrol that has already been started. 
These patrols may be in a Sunday School, a Boys’ Brigade, a Boys’ 
Club, a Young Men’s Christian Association, a Young Men’s Hebrew 
Association, a Young Men’s Catholic Association, or any other organi¬ 
zation of a like nature. 

A patrol consists of eight boys, one of whom becomes the patrol 
leader and another the assistant patrol leader. A troop consists of three 
or more patrols, and the leader of the troop is called a Scout Master. 
There can be no patrols or troops of Boy Scouts without this Scout 
Master. 

There are three classes of scouts among the Boy Scouts of Amer¬ 
ica—the Tenderfoot, the Second-class Scout, and the First-class Scout. 
Before a.boy becomes a Tenderfoot he must qualify for that class. A 
Tenderfoot, therefore, is superior to the ordinary boy because of his 
training. To be a Tenderfoot means to occupy the lowest grade in 
Scouting. A Tenderfoot, after serving one month and meeting cer¬ 
tain other requirements explained further on in this article, may be¬ 
come a Second-class Scout, and a Second-class Scout, upon meeting 
another set of requirements, may become a First-class Scout. 

A boy becomes a Tenderfoot when he knows the history of the 
United States flag and the customary forms due it; when he knows 
the Scout law, sign, salut'e and significance of the badge; and when he 
can tie quickly and efficiently four out of nine most common standard 
knots. Having successfully passed such a test, the boy takes the Scout 
oath: “I promise, on my honor, I will do my best: i. To do my duty 
to God and to my Country, and to obey the Scout Law. 2. To help 
other people at all times. 3. To keep myself physically strong, men¬ 
tally awake, and morally straight.” 

There are twelve elements of the Scout law which the boy 
promises to obey and uphold. He must do his best to be trustworthy, 


THE T'.OY SCOUTS 


405 


loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, 
brave, clean and reverent. 

THINK OF ALL THAT SCOUT OATH MEANS! 

Honor, duty, reverence, patriotism, self-sacrifice, obedience, all 
in that simple promise! Those are things that boys often consider 
very little. The full text of the Scout’s Law obliges the boy to tell the 
truth; to obey his father and mother, his own leader and officers 
of the law; to help others even at risk to himself; to look upon all 
other people as his brothers and equals; to be like Kim in Kipling’s 
story, “The little friend of all the world.” He promises to look out 
especially for old people, cripples and little children; to take no reward 
for kindness; to befriend animals and protect them from abuse; to do 
his duty cheerfully, and not grumble or whine; to “grin and bear” dis¬ 
agreeable things and go about smiling and whistling; to use no pro¬ 
fane or vulgar language, and to save his money. 

A boy who has been idle, thoughtless and evil-minded breaks with 
his past and burns his old bridges on becoming a Boy Scout tender¬ 
foot. He stands on a new moral plane with the public opinion of his 
companions to keep him up to the mark. Besides, he immediately 
has interesting things to think of and to do. He discovers new 
powers in himself that increase his self-respect. Then he goes into 
training for the rank of second-class scout, and that involves real work. 

THE BOY SCOUT’S UNIFORM. 

A uniform is not necessary, but it is advisable. All boys love uni¬ 
forms, decorations and display. It is a very attractive outfit, all of an 
olive drab khaki, semi-military, semi-sporting in style. There is a flat- 
brimmed army hat of olive drab felt, with or without chin tie, a khaki 
flannel shirt and a sweater, knee breeches of the same material as the 
shirt and coat, a leather or web belt, puttee leggins, and a haversack. 
The usual articles carried are a 6 1-2 foot staff, a lanyard, a knife, a 
canteen, axe, poncho and whistle. A very limited camp outfit or 
cooking kit consisting of a coffee or tea can, stew or fry pan with 
cover, and one boiler with two handles may be carried in the haver¬ 
sack. There is a badge for the button hole, the scroll motto, “Be Pre¬ 
pared,” a shoulder knot of the patrol colors, a neck kerchief of the 
troop colors and special “honur” badges for the sleeve. It is a rough 
and ready uniform and outfit but as inexpensive and serviceable as 
possible, neat and smart, and it stands for so much skill and general 


466 


TIIF. BOY SCOUTS 


knowledge and moral discipline and fun that a boy is very proud of the 
privilege of wearing it. 

THE CLUB ROOM AND HOW TO FIT IT UP. 

One of the first things a patrol usually does is to find a club room. 
Such a room is not always absolutely necessary, as the boys may meet 
in one another’s homes for such occasions when the troop or patrol 
meet, but a special room proves an excellent thing to have for troop 
and patrol meetings, where the whole group of boys can get together 
every so often and feel that each has a common ownership in the place. 
Very often the use of a vacant store or barn may be had for nothing. 
The boys themselves should clean the place and make it attractive; 
soap and kalsomine are cheap. Most boys now have manual training 
in school and can make tables, benches, stools and book shelves of 
packing cases, staining them in dark colors, or they can repair old 
furniture that may be donated. There should be a stove and good 
lamps or some other means of heating and lighting. The ingenuity 
and resourcefulness of the boys can be used in finding things such as 
flags, rugs, cushions and lithograph prints to make the club room 
attractive. The more the club room costs in time and effort, the more 
it will be appreciated by the boys. A small fee should be paid each 
week by every member to cover the cost of fuel and oil, but the boys, 
according to the Scout principles, should earn the money themselves 
for such expenses. 

OTHER THINGS THE SCOUT MUST DO AND LEARN. 

He must serve one month as a Tenderfoot. He must learn, by 
text-book study, and by actual practice on his mates or at home, how 
to give elementary first aid to the injured. He must learn elementary 
signaling, by the Semaphore, American Morse or Myer alohabets. He 
must be able to track one-half mile in twenty-five minutes, and be 
able to name and describe satisfactorily the contents of one store win¬ 
dow out of four observed for one minute each. He must be able to sro 

o 

a mile in twelve minutes at Scout’s pace—about 50 steps running and 
50 steps walking alternately. He must lay and light a camp fire, 
using not more than two matches, and know the proper use of knife 
or hatchet. He must earn and deposit at least one dollar in a public 
bank. He must be able to cook meat and potatoes over the camp fire 
with the simplest camp kit; and he must know the sixteen principal 
points of the compass. 


THE BOY SCOUTS 


407 


THE NAMES AND CALLS. 

Each new patrol of each troop selects a color and a name. The 
name is that of some bird or animal after the Indian fashion, and the 
one chosen becomes their “totem’* name or patrol animal. Thus a 
patrol is known as “Wild Cats,” “Otters,” “Beavers,” “Buffalos,” 
“Wolves,” or anything the patrol members decide upon. Each Scout 
in a patrol should be able to imitate the call of his patrol animal. Thus 
the Scouts of the Wolf Patrol should be able to imitate a wolf. In this 
way Scouts of the same patrol can communicate with each other when 
in hiding or the dark of night. It is not honorable for a Scout to use 
the call of any patrol except his own. The members of each patrol are 
distinguished from those of other patrols by their colors, which are 
worn upon the left shoulder in a shoulder knot. 

Each troop of Boy Scouts is named after the place to which it 
belongs, as for example, Troop No. i, 2, 3 or 4 of New York or San 
Francisco. Each Scout in a patrol has a number, the patrol leader 
being No. 1, the assistant patrol leader No. 2, and the other Scouts 
the remaining consecutive numbers. Scouts in this way should work 
in pairs, Nos. 3 and 4 together, Nos. 5 and 6 together, Nos. 7 and 8 
together. The patrol leader calls up his patrol at will by sounding his 
whistle and by giving the call of the patrol. Each patrol leader carries 
a small flag on the end of his staff with the head of his patrol animal 
shown on each side. 

When the Scout makes signs anywhere for others to read he also 
draws the head of his patrol animal. This is to say, that if he were out 
scouting and wanted to show that a certain road should not be fol¬ 
lowed by others, he would draw the sign “not be followed” across it 
and add the name of his patrol animal in order to show which patrol 
discovered that the road was bad, and by adding his own number at 
the left of the head would show which Scout had discovered it. For 
such purposes the Scouts are also supposed to know the different 
Indian and Scouting signs. 

HOW THE RANK OF “FIRST CLASS SCOUT” IS WON. 

To win the rank of first-class scout, a boy must pass ten more 
hard tests. There are higher requirements in money saving, life sav¬ 
ing, athletics, camp cooking, map-making and reading, judgment of 
size, direction and distance without instruments, knowledge of nature. 


468 


THE BOY SCOUTS 


signalling, manual skill in wood or metal working. And he must 
enroll and train a tenderfoot. 

All this involves indoor and outdoor work, text-book study and 
outdoor practice. As quickly as possible a patrol should take the trail 
into an open field, an orchard or a park, and each time with some 
definite object in view. But that object should be accomplished in a 
variety of ways. The boys should be given their heads, although 
always accompanied by an adult leader, and should be encouraged to 
invent sports and to carry out their ideas with spirit. 

To a boy a pond or lagoon easily becomes the high seas, a clump 
of trees Robin Hood’s forest. An open space is a prairie covered with 
buffalo. Through an orchard boys will steal, single file like Cooper’s 
Indians. To find their way by the stars, by landmarks and signs, adds 
both to their knowledge and to their pleasure. 

HOW THE HONOR BADGES ARE WON. 

The rank of First-class Scout is the highest in Scouting, but a 
boy can go in for various merit badges and honors, for which there are 
specific requirements outlined in the boys’ Handbook or Manual. He 
can win badges for Agriculture, Architecture, Astronomy, Carpentry, 
Civics, Firemanship, Life Saving, Photography, Seamanship, Survey¬ 
ing, or as an Electrician or Musician. Each one involves study, prac¬ 
tice and examinations. Signaling alone involves a study of telegraphy 
or reading signals by sound, of the semaphore and heliograph, and of 
the different smoke and fire signals. 

The Official Handbook of the Boy Scouts of America gives re¬ 
quirements for 57 different merit badges and outlines the study and 
work. There is a special handbook upon the methods of passing these 
requirements, and the exact knowledge which is necessary therefor. 
Also, as part of the boys’ Handbook, there are several chapters of 
general knowledge, by Mr. Seton on Woodlore; by Dr. Dali on Shell¬ 
fish; Dr. Smith on Fishes and Angling; Dr. Corbett on Flowers; Mr. 
Gibson on Campcrafts and Hiking; Mr. Seton on Trailing and Sig¬ 
naling; Dr. Fisher on Health; Mr. Alexander on Chivalry; Mr. Sher¬ 
man and Col. Roosevelt on Patriotism and Citizenship; Majors Lynch 
and Longfellow on First Aid and Life Saving, besides a number of 
other contributions by well-known authors. 

Many of these things are learned and practiced in games that 
have been invented to copy the real work of the Indian, the pioneer 


THE BOY SCOUTS 


469 


and the army scout. With dummies there are deer and bear hunts, 
fishing for sturgeon and whales, canoe tag, games of quick and far 
sight, spot the rabbit, man hunt, spy in the camp, tree the coon, 
feather blow, fire-fly dance, lion hunt, raid the flag, throw the assegai, 
track the thief, snow fort, man hunt, smugglers over the border and 
countless other games. 

YOU CAN BE A SCOUT ALL YOUR LIFE. 

Once a Scout, a boy can remain in the organization as long as he 
lives. Joining at twelve years of age, he can rise in rank, becoming an 
assistant patrol leader, a patrol leader, a troop leader, and as he passes 
the age of 18, an assistant Scout Master, then a Scout Master, a Coun¬ 
cilor or a Commissioner. As a man he can give as much or as little 
time to the work as he chooses, and train one patrol after another; 
and that is just what is wanted—boys who will remain in the work 
when they grow up and help save future generations of boys. Money 
is not needed so much as human service. The expense is kept at a 
minimum, and each patrol or troop takes care of itself, with the aid of 
the Scout Master or Local Council. The less boys are helped from the 
outside, the more self-reliant and resourceful they become. Even in 
camping trips a patrol roughs it and lives as cheaply as at home. In 
scouting all boys have the same advantages. Each has the chance of 
a healthy, moral, mental and physical development, and each has his 
character built and moulded by the principles and daily habits of life 
which arise from his activities in scouting. 

References: The Official Handbook for Boys, published by the 
Editorial Board of the National Council; Two Little Savages, by 
Ernest Thompson-Seton; The Boy Problem, by W. B. Forbush; First 
Aid to the Injured, edited by the International Committee of the Y. M. 
C. A.; Camping and Woodcraft, by Horace Kephart; Emergencies, by 
C. V. Gulick; The Boy Pioneers, by Dan C. Beard; The Handbook for 
Scout Masters, published by the Editorial Board of the Boy Scouts of 
America; The Coming Generation, by W. B. Forbush; Boy Training, 
by John L. Alexander; Boy Life and Self-Government, by George W. 
Fiske. For full biography upon Scout work and the different phases 
of Scouting see the Appendix of the different publications and hand¬ 
books of the Boy Scouts of America. 


ONLY ONE OF SIX 


Those who do not already possess them will be glad to 
know they can get five more volumes of “Hows and Whys.” The 
present volume, although complete in itself, is only one of a set of six. 


Can a Kangaroo Climb a Tree? 

(Our illustration shows the hind leg and claws of a kangaroo ) 

What determines the 
grouping of the stars? 

When is a person near¬ 
sighted ? 

What caused the Turco- 
Italian and Balkan Wars? 

How and when did China 
become a Republic? 

How did Edison invent 
the phonograph? 

Name the three chief 
classes of Opera? 

Th< 

Student’s Reference Work 

It Keeps Boys at Home After Supper 

Your child’s success in life will depend upon his ability to find things for 
himself. The New Student’s Reference Work teaches him where and how to get the in¬ 
formation he requires from day to day in his school work, and at the same time trains him 
in the use of a reference work—one of the most important things he will ever learn to do. 
And it is far more interesting than the streets at night. 

It makes studies attractive to the boy who dislikes school and keeps 
the brighter boy from being held back by the rest of the class. 



What is the difference 
between a rabbit and a 
hare? 

What is the strength of 
our Army and Navy? 

What causes loss of voice 
in canaries? 

Is a spider an insect ? 


The above are examples of 
more than 6,000 Classified 
Questions, with references to 
pages on which the answers are 
given in 


New 


For Children from Seven to Seventy 

The New Student’s Reference Work not only contains just what your 

children need in their studies from Kindergarten to University, but it answers the questions that are 
constantly coming up in conversation among cultured people—the things it is embarrassing not to know. 


Commendation From a High Source — ■ 

“I am greatly pleased with The New Student’s 
Reference Work. The whole set should be very use¬ 
ful” F. P, Claxton , U. S. Commissioner of Education . 


— Worthy a Place in Every Home 

“It is a valuable work and worthy of a place in the 
homes of our country.” 

—E. J. Fairchild. Pres. National Educational Assn. 














The Snail Can Stand It-But the Child? 


No Big 
Words 
In His 
Way 


They ’re 
Our 

Children 
After 
All y 
Aren’t 
They? 


Big words stand in the way of seeing 
simple thing's. For example, what is probably 
the best known encyclopedia, in undertaking to 
tell what a “Snail” is, uses “Basommatophora, 
Pectinibranchia, Helicinidae” and 37 other 
technical terms in a definition 300 words long. 
In another well known encyclopedia there are 
twenty words of the same sort, and, in still 
another, fifty. 

These hard names don’t hurt the snail— he 
doesn’t have to read them—but how about the 
child ? 

Little Biscuits and Little Minds 

Who doesn’t wish to help her children in 
their school work? Yet how many can? No 
other reference work has even attempted to cover 
the Art of Teaching so broadly as does the Stu¬ 
dent’s—and in language that every mother can 
understand. There are more than forty articles 
on this subject alone. Let us learn at least as 
much about moulding little minds as we know 
already about moulding little biscuits. 

Work of Eminent Educators 


Special¬ 
ists Who 
Know 
School 
Needs 


Can You 
Afford 
To Be 
Without 
It? 


The most eminent educators—each a special¬ 
ist—the heads of departments in universities 
like Columbia, Chicago and Yale have co-oper¬ 
ated with the Editor-in-Chief in preparing this 
great work. 

Nearly a Million Sets Sold 

Since the first Edition nearly a million sets 
nave been sold. The product of twenty years 
in actual use, it has seen many hasty and cheap 
imitations retire from the field in which it 
occupies a unique position and one vital to the 
highest efficiency of our school system. 

Only Fifty Cents a Week 

Upon a small initial payment we deliver the 
Five Volumes. Under this arrangement you 
have the use of the entire set while paying for 
them, at fifty cents a week. If you do not 
possess it already don’t deprive youiself and 
your children of this invaluable work. 



SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION 


^.E.Compton & Company 

Publishers 

to C.B.Beach Sc Co. 

215 South Market Street, Chicago. 


HOWS AND 
WHYS BY THE 
THOUSANDS 


Over15,000 sub¬ 
jects including 
3,000 biographies. 
Our “Analytical 
Index” coveringl 00 
pages, and “Lesson 

Outlines ”,— 75 

pages—puts every 
fact and subject at 
your finger ends. 

Answers to the 

Natural Questions 
of Boys and Girls 
are used in these 
WonderfulVolumes 
to help them in 
theirSchool Studies 
in; 

AGRICULTURE 

ANATOMY 

ASTRONOMY 

BIOGRAPHY 

BIOLOGY 

BOTANY 

CHEMISTRY 

DRAMA 

FINE ARTS 

GEOGRAPHY 

GEOLOGY 

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LITERATURE 

METEOROLOGY 

MUSIC 

NATURE STUDY 

PHILOSOPHY 

PHYSICS 

PHYSIOLOGY 

RELIGION 

TEACHING 

TRADES AND 

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ZOOLOGY 


























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